I Love Hard, But Once I Stop Caring — You'll Never Get Me Back
See you never.
getty Throughout the years, I've built up a weird reputation of being a kind of a heartbreaker. This is not because I'm a cold-hearted person who doesn't think twice about leading someone on, or that I have flocks of men confessing their love to me at any given moment. In fact, it's kind of the opposite.
I've had to learn how to get over a broken heart many times. I've had my heart broken, by many people. I've got years worth of pathetic diary entries and attempts at songwriting to provide it. If you clicked on my drafts folder of my old Myspace account, you'd probably cringe so hard you might implode.
But you see, my heart doesn't break when the breakup is official. It happens when I first realize we're doomed.
After an entire relationship of over-caring, over-sharing, over-compensating, and showing my big heart to my partner, I eventually have that moment when I realize that I've done too much. I've set the bar impossibly high, and there's no way the person I'm with could ever reach it. I've let my fantasies for our future together delude my reality.
Simply put, I realize what I have isn't what I what. And my heart breaks.
Sometimes this realization comes in a moment of sad solitude, but usually, it's after the person I'm with does something that severely contradicts with the person I thought they were. They do something mean or say something they can't take back, or their burst of anger finally reveals themselves to be a pattern of a self-destruction.
In those moments, my heart breaks — but I still have hope. I tell them how I feel and wait for them to jump to save us. I open up about my insecurities, tell them what I what, and hope they prove me wrong.
But then they don't. Then I make the decision to leave. And once I make that decision, there's no turning back.
I don't really like ultimatums or any decision that doesn't give a human room be a human. Everyone messes up, and second chances should be more common in my opinion. But I don't believe in being with someone who only wants to save things after you've left.
Because really, at that point, they're only freaking out because they're realizing that they're alone. It has less to do with losing me and our relationship, and everything to do with their own insecurities.
And honestly, I don't want to be with someone who's heart I have to break just so I can get them to listen to me. So yes, I'm a heartbreaker in a sense. But we can't be expected to open wounds that have already healed just because the person who hurt us is finally ready to change.
You — and I — deserve someone who won't let the relationship get to the point of breaking before they're willing to fix it.
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor living in California. She covers all things relationships, news, true crime, and pop culture.