A Letter to SOMEONE Who Destroyed Me Emotionally!

Yep, that's right. Thank you is the most important message to send to a partner who brought us to the absolute lowest emotional point of our life. That level of degradation, desperation, and such a rollercoaster of extreme emotions is hard to put into words. You built me up, just to let me fall. You lulled me into a false sense of security, only to make me realize the full extent of the danger I had willingly put myself in. But no more. Today, years later, I look back on my time with you like time spent in a rigorous training camp. I was a happy, but naïve and thoroughly insecure person, I signed up for it, craving your attention and what I thought was love. 3 years later, all that was left of me was a steaming pile of misery. No friends left to speak of. Well, you didn’t like them. Not a shred of self-esteem, I was never good enough for you. Everything I did was wrong and fell far short of your high standards. You let me hang from your arm, emotionally starved, barely giving me a chance. Back then, you were my antichrist, evil personified. I thought I’d been lured into a relationship under false pretenses with the promise of happiness. All the signs were there. We had so much in common. I found your stories fascinating and refreshingly different. Unfortunately, I wasn’t actually listening. Today, years later, I know: You never promised me anything. You told me straight up that you didn't want a relationship and that you’d never been faithful to your previous partners. If only I’d believed you, if only I’d truly heard the words that left your lips. How does the old saying go again? Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You have to be able to accept the truth. I could still slap myself today when I think back to all the warning signs that kept popping up along the way. What I thought, at the time, was the greatest display of deception ever seen now seems like the exact opposite to me. The truth was staring me in the face the whole time, I just didn’t want to accept it. I made every mistake that only a person looking for love can make. I talked myself into a lot of things. I dismissed all the insults as jokes. I let you criticize and talk down about my friends and family. I doubted myself. I let myself be influenced by your warped understanding of morality and loyalty and so I missed out. The only thing I could count on you for was to be a stone-cold brick wall of rejection for me to run straight into time and time again. After a painstaking breakup, I resented all of that. Today, I know that I was the one I had to thank for all of this. If a man says that he doesn’t want you, or if he does but only on his terms, we should believe him. We’re not some kind of magical last woman on Earth that’s going to make him change his ways from bad apple to knight in shining armor. He has a clear view of what life should be and he constantly pursues it. Perhaps we might be a practical, but secondary, thing to have in their life for now, but nothing more than that. We shouldn’t ignore this brutal truth in favor of our desperate romantic agenda that we’re pursuing to the point of self-destruction. It wasn’t on you, it was on me. Men, or partners in general, that leave us at emotional rock bottom are often only partly to blame. If they’re not actually treating us badly, lying to us or cheating on us, then perhaps the reason our hearts find themselves at the end of their tether lies with us. Dreams and reality very rarely collide in real relationships. We’ve been so brainwashed by Hollywood cliches and deceptive images conjured up by social media that we forget the most important thing in this equation: The human factor. In real life, no man can keep up with romantic fiction, which incidentally is usually written by women, for women. They cater to our longing for the perfect man to take us by the hand and make all our dreams come true. Then let’s say this guy in real life says things like, “I don’t really feel like doing anything this weekend,” or “Vacations aren’t really my thing,” and gets annoyed when you want to know by Wednesday what you’re doing on the weekend, isn’t that nice? But if we’re honest, he’s got every right to feel that way. The problem clearly lies on the other end. That doesn’t mean that we have to be happy about it, quite the opposite. When I think about it today, the best solution would have been to think, ‘Okay, we clearly want two very different things, so it’s goodbye.’ If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have wasted 3 years of my life or waited so long for the penny to finally drop.  But most women in my position have done exactly the same. Why? Because we don’t want to give up just because things aren’t perfect. Because we know that no relationship is ever perfect. Because we’re hoping that it’ll get better. And because we are so convinced that we could never have got it all so wrong. A bit wrong, perhaps, but not completely, right? So, we clutch at every straw. One day he brings us flowers and we’re completely over the moon. We instantly forget that he’s never really there when we need him or if we want to make plans, all thanks to a quick stop at the gas station for a bunch of cheap flowers. Us women need to learn earlier on in life to raise our standards. Lesson one of kindergarten, or pretty soon after at least, should be: It’s okay to be single. Lesson two should be: A relationship is like a glove. It has to fit when you try it on or it’s never going to be right. And lesson three: A man should make us happier than we would be without him. If a relationship takes a turn for the worse, which happens more than you’d think, then you’re better off without him. Here’s what I wish. All the best and a beautiful life for the man who destroyed my emotions. Without you I would not have become strong. To this day, I would not know what to expect from life and love. If I’d stayed with you, I would’ve been held back, and my life would’ve revolved around you. Without you I wouldn't know how easy it can be to fall foul of your principles if you don't listen to your heart, your inner voice, and your friends.