People Share What Ended Their First Relationship Ever
Love is both the strongest and the most fragile bond. With years of care put into it, love can become nearly unbreakable. Young love, however, can be broken with a few simple words or a single mistake. People in their first relationship are still learning what love is; how to make it through the inevitable disagreements and get along with each other’s quirks.
The first relationship is often one of the most poignant, partially because it is so weak. That first affair with love can be ended by any number of things, perhaps proving that we’re all a little crazy to want love so much. In this list, heartbroken people share the stories behind the end of their first relationship.
Don’t forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 Growing Up And Apart
She packed a suitcase, left only a note, and flew back to the UK. All while I was at work, thinking she was just at home taking a nap. Why? She felt guilty that I was moving forward as a person while she was still “finding herself.” She kept saying she couldn’t decide what she wanted to do in life. Little did she know that I was sprinting to grow up so I would be able to provide better for both of us.
#2 Too Young With Cats
She wanted marriage, kids and to settle down. We were 21 years old and had been together for four years. We were just too young. We eventually broke up and it was devastating for both of us. The weirdest part about it was getting texts or calls about the cat we raised when we were still together, passing of old age. RIP Repo The Cat.
#3 Not The One He Really Wanted
He was just with me because he lived too far away from the girl he really wanted. Strange really; when I talked to the other girl, he used to say the same things to both of us. He’d send us both the same pictures and the same compliments. I then realized that maybe he wasn’t the loyal man I thought he was.
#4 Work Needs Fair Division
He told me that in his culture, the women handle all the housework. Well, that’s fine and dandy but I work more than full-time. I go to school part-time, do all the housework, pay all the bills, take care of the dog, and have to still maintain my car and the yard, which are arguably a man’s responsibilities. So the typical doesn’t really apply here now, does it? He basically just played video games, made messes, went to the gym for hours and then would volunteer to work 10-hour days so his mommy could say he was tired and I was a bad wife.
#5 Not A Girl’s Night After All
We were together for eight years. She started university after the sixth year. We got a house that year together and that’s when things started going downhill. She would go on “nights out with the girls” every other weekend. She became very defensive whenever I asked if she made any new friends at university, saying, “Oh no, I just stick with Emma and do my projects with her.” I never was probing, I just thought it was a nice conversation starter.
Then, in the final year, I would come home and she would tell me a story of how she and Emma went for a coffee. Emma, at the same time, was chatting to me on Facebook, asking if I’ve seen her. I questioned her about this and found out that she was with another man. To add to this, I found out she had been with a string of men since she started university.
I packed my stuff, left the house to live with my parents and never looked back even with the desperate phone calls from her begging me back. It hurt like hell to lose my partner and best friend of eight years, but I’m stronger than I ever have been, emotionally. I am also currently living with my new partner and we are happy as ever.
#6 Sometimes Distance Cannot Be Overcome
We dated for two months and she ended up moving seven hours away. I wanted to break it off but we were in love and she insisted we keep trying to make it work. Long-distance is tough. It makes it hard to work out the issues you have. I hated being tied to my phone so we could text every day. I thought about moving but I wasn’t comfortable with it since we didn’t date very long when we lived in the same town. If we dated for a long time and then she moved, I would feel more secure to move in with her.
A big thing you need in a long-distance relationship is an end date. Eventually, you have to close the gap. Someone has to move. We didn’t have that. It became exhausting seeing her once every five or six weeks and then having a relationship dependent on my phone. We lasted a year before I called it quits. She was fine with the distance and I was not.
#7 Assumption Becomes Loss
I took her for granted. She was head over heels in love with me. I took it for granted and assumed this would never change. We were together for four years. We made it through our first year of college, but I made zero effort to go to visit her and meet her new friends. I didn’t put in the effort and eventually, her new life went on without me.
I went to her school one time to pick her up and see her dorm, etc. She came to see me every single weekend and took the train here and back. Eventually, toward the end of the year, she started to miss weekends… Then, weeks in a row. She usually used studying as an excuse. Had I made an effort to meet her new friends who, to this day, are still her best friends, everything would have turned out different.
She’d found a new guy that fit better into her life and midway through the summer it was over. She shouldn’t have cheated but I also can’t really blame her… she was young and I forgave her. We occasionally chat now. I loved her to death but just based on how loyal she was and how stupid I was, I assumed she’d be there forever.
#8 Lack Of Essential Communication
After a year of dating, never fighting, and getting along perfectly well, she looked at me and said: “I’m breaking up with you.” Out of the blue. A year later, I ran into her at a party and she told me it was because we never talked about our feelings… I said, “So why didn’t you say something?” She admitted it was dumb. We ended up making out, but it just wasn’t the same and we never got back together. I was 17. I’m now 31, and honestly, she’s the one that got away.
#9 No Cake For Her
She mentioned that no one ever made her a birthday cake, not even her mom. I was at the store buying cake ingredients. Then, she called me and told me she went bowling with one of her friends. She said there was a bet that involved another guy and she lost, so she kissed him. She said she had to because it was a bet. I’ll never forget putting all of the ingredients back on the shelves.
#10 Didn’t Want To Hurt Him Anymore
I might be an outlier here… but when I was with him, I was a horrible person. He was so eager to please, and as a people-pleaser myself, this is saying a lot. I didn’t know how to handle his expectations or his family’s. I don’t know if I actually did love him. He told me he loved me and I figured it was polite to tell him I loved him back.
I didn’t treat him particularly well after he became less… convenient. I had my own plans as to how my life would go, but I had no idea how to tell him he wasn’t part of it. He ended up just wanting to follow me wherever I went. I resented him following me because all he ever wanted was to make me happy without having any input. It was always “What do you want to do,” or “I want to do what you want to do.”
I ended up breaking up with him because I just didn’t want to be that person anymore. I wanted to not be with him, and I just never knew how to tell him. I kept half-breaking up with him or asking him for space, and he’d say okay. Then, I’d feel bad and we’d get back together. I did things that I hoped would push him away, but he’d still be there.
Anyways, I didn’t treat him well. That’s the main takeaway. I didn’t want to be the bad guy, but I sure wasn’t the good guy. I wasn’t mature enough at the time to take on what I thought I was able to. I should have told him that I wasn’t ready for a relationship that serious at the time. I did apologize to him years later, but he was still on his own path and it was a mixed experience.
#11 Children, No Children
She really wants kids, and I really don’t. We’re both mature enough to know there’s no compromising with this and that trying to change the other’s mind isn’t a good path. She ended up landing a teaching job a few hours away and that provided the best opportunity for a clean break. It sucks. We were together for over three years, we lived together for over two, and we were fully in love. We both agreed we would have gotten married if not for the kid issue. I miss the heck out of her. She misses the heck out of me. We have no idea how to handle a breakup when we’re both still in love.
#12 Sick Colors
I was sick, and it wasn’t just a little head cold. I was feverish, dizzy, nauseous, and could barely talk because my throat was so swollen. My boyfriend called to remind me that I was to drive him to his weekly haircut. He was 30 years old and without a license because of his recent DUI. He was also living at his mom’s at the time.
I told him, “I’m so sorry, but I can’t anymore because I’m feeling terrible.” He immediately became cold as ice and said, “Okay, have a good one I guess,” before hanging up on me. He then texted: “Don’t tell someone you can do something and not do it.” I responded by telling him that I was SUPER SICK and that he should go with the flow since not everything is will always go as planned.
This set him off. He sent a flurry of texts that effectively slaughtered our relationship. He said things like, “Your true colors are disgusting,” and that I’m “rude as hell.” He even told me to lose his number. This completely crushed me. I still chased him for a few months after that. I’m happy to report I’ve met some amazingly kind and respectful guys since then.
#13 What I Wanted To Be
I wasn’t there emotionally. When we’d argue or fight, I’d shut down, internalize, and shut her out until I was emotionally calm. I’d sometimes not talk to her for two days. I just didn’t want to respond in anger. I didn’t want to show fear or weakness or incapabilities. I wanted to put forth the image of what I felt a man was: strong, dependable, a provider, a protector, and a helper. I did that, so much so that I never gave her all of me. She was my first everything. She was my wife. And she’s gone now.
#14 Fourscore And One Breakup Ago
My ex was over at my apartment one night and I was watching this documentary on Abraham Lincoln. She was playing around on her phone like she usually would. Then, she just randomly put her phone down and said, “Abraham Lincoln was a warmonger,” before picking her phone back up and continuing her swipe-fest through Pinterest.
Now, it’s important to note: she’s from North Carolina and I’m from Ohio. We often teased each other about our accents. Her accent is very much southern and mine is pretty midwestern sounding. She also liked to remind me that the Big 10 would never be half of what the SEC is and Roll Tide is, etc. But that was about as much as we discussed our differences of origin latitudes.
So, I paused the show and said, “Come again?” She said, “He was a warmonger. The civil war had nothing to do with slavery. It was all about states’ rights and his tyranny in trampling all over them.” I said, “Well, I disagree, frankly. Almost every state cited preservation of slavery in their declarations of secession and the Confederate constitution listed it explicitly as a right that cannot be outlawed. It was one of the very few things it was explicit about.”
She said, “Whatever, Lincoln wasn’t some angel who just tried to free slaves, he only did it as a war measure to weaken the south.” I then replied, “He hated slavery and he had his heart set on abolition since before he was president. He just needed the right climate and preparation to do it, hence waiting until the victory at Gettysburg to start the process.”
This goes on for a while until it eventually evolved into a shouting match. At some p0int, she finally called me a jerk and stormed out. We broke up two days later.
#15 One Grew Up, One Did Not
I became a different person during our relationship. We fit each other well in the beginning, but I felt that in the three years that we knew each other (first online, then meeting in person for one- to three-week visits at a time), I went from being a weirdo with no social skills to being a slightly less weird misfit who could hold down a job and normal conversational skills with people.
He was still “quirky” and “bizarre” and terrified at the idea of me leaving him alone for more than a few hours at a time when we were together (either at home or in the city). I didn’t see any progressions towards adulthood in those years. He didn’t advance at work, he still lived at home, he ate like a toddler, and it was really distressing to think I’d be chained to that.
Knowing that the plan was for him to come to the US and that we would get married super young also made me panic; nevermind the nightmare of immigration. Then, when he told me that he expected that he would go to film school while I worked and took care of him, that was the nail in the coffin. He definitely wasn’t the one for me.
#16 From Closet To France
There were a lot of reasons. We started dating in our freshman year of college. She’s from Syria and her parents are both devout Muslims (we all live in California). This was not only a problem because they are strict, but also because we are both women. Naturally, she was extremely closeted and we had to sneak around. We were together for a little over a year and practically lived with each other.
She broke up with me because she accepted an opportunity to study abroad in France. She doesn’t know how a future with us together would be possible even though she said she wanted it. So, we broke up ultimately because of timing and being inexperienced. I still love her with all my heart even if it didn’t work out.
#17 Rather A Hive Of Bees
We were around 16 years old. A few weeks into the “relationship,” I went to her house for the first time and met her overbearing, nosy parents. 21 Questions was an amateur’s game for them. 200 Questions were more like it. I decided I didn’t want to go there ever again. The next day, during a chat on MSN, she invited me up to her family’s cottage for the Christmas break and said her extended family would be there.
I pictured being at a dinner table with a dozen strangers all like her parents and I realized I’d rather spend Christmas with a hive of bees. I told her plainly I wasn’t big on spending a bunch of time with her family. She didn’t like that. The next two days were awkward, and then we broke up. I was relieved, and I’m sure she was too.
#18 No Fun For Anyone
I wanted to go out and have fun dates. Anything I could think of or plan would instantly be shot down if he wasn’t interested in it, despite me going to every single Marvel movie and doing things for him that I didn’t like. Plus, he would constantly tell me we needed to find fun things to do, but never put any effort or planning into doing something fun. The second date we went on was a free comic book day. I broke up with him then and I went out with friends for tea instead. No regrets.
#19 Grew Into Something More
He dumped me because I wasn’t the person he wanted me to be anymore.
We were majorly codependent for the first two years we were together. We spent all of our time together and even stopped hanging out with our friends. We were inseparable. But then he went to college four hours away. It was my senior year. I developed friends and interests outside of our relationship.
When I decided not to graduate early and to go to Scotland with my theatre class for two weeks after school ended, he felt like I was changing and not sticking to our plan. So he dumped me. Then, he came back over Christmas break and told me he didn’t want me to move on. That on again-off again pattern continued for six more months.
#20 Health Changes And Jealousy
We were together for eight years and married for three of those. We were both obese for most of our time together. About a year before we split up, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, which was a real wake-up call for me. I began to eat healthily and exercise. He wasn’t interested in any of it. When I’d lost about 70 pounds, he began to get very insecure. I was spending a lot of time with family as my dad was terminally ill, but he wouldn’t come to family events often, claiming he “couldn’t handle it”.
He began cooking more and sneaking sugar and cheese into my food. He withheld money from me to stop me from going out or buying clothes that fit after losing so much weight. He stopped inviting his friends around to the house. I think he was jealous when I talked to them. It was a lot to deal with while my dad was suffering, so I tried to just get through it. I didn’t want to upset my dad at this time by separating from my husband.
On the day my dad passed away, he accused me of having an affair. I still felt like I needed his support, so I tried my best to reassure him. By this time, I was just trying to get through the first days of loss of my dad. After then, I was going to tell him to leave. When he caused a scene at my dad’s funeral because I moved away from him to hug my mom, a friend of the family had to forcibly remove him. I stopped trying to reassure and appease him. I stopped talking to him. My brother went to the house and made sure he packed his things. He knew he’d screwed up big time. He didn’t argue; he just took his things and left. I never spoke to him again.
#21 No More Stress Relief
We both had our problems. I’m a closed-off person who tries to put logic into everything and is never bothered by anything to a fault. She, on the other hand, was a stress sponge who let everything bother her. She never wanted to talk about the problems and would just let stuff build up to become bigger problems than they needed to be.
We worked out well for three and a half years mostly because I was always able to relieve her stress and get her to open up to me. Then, we moved in together. A few months in, I lost my job and my car was stolen with all $3,000 worth of my tools in it (I traveled for work ). I had a hard time getting a job after that, and after a few months, money got tight.
I became less of a stress reliever in her eyes. Eventually, it turned around and I was the one causing stress. After that, she pretty much closed down on me and five months later, our relationship was done. I’m not going to say I did everything I could to fix it, because I didn’t, it just brought to light a good chunk of issues we were having and neither one of us really realized it until it was too late.
#22 Traveling Versus Settling Down
We were just too young, and not quite right for each other. I’m a highly practical, fairly reserved introvert who is always planning. I’m from a very close-knit, upper-middle-class family who I still lived with at the time. Also, I’m super anxious. Well, I was especially then. I was going to art school at the time, so I was pretending to be chill and artsy.
He was a pretty chill IT support guy with a very kind heart. He was from a broken middle-class family who he was slightly estranged from. He lived in a house with a bunch of friends. It was a great relationship for a while, but he wanted a more chill girl. Over the course of our relationship, I dropped out of art school and went into a program that was much more practical.
I was applying pressure to move in together, and he realized that we had such different goals, so he ended it. We had a good relationship, though with no future. We kept each other in our lives as very good friends and occasional lovers. Eventually, we got to the point of deciding whether we should get back together or end it completely and we did the more sensible thing.
#23 Sometimes We Need Space
We got in a days-long argument two hours away from where we both lived. When it came to a head, I got out of the car in front of where we were staying and went inside. He drove away. I waited for hours before I called my mom to pick me up. I was 17. She told my boyfriend I needed space from him. That very afternoon when I parked my car to go on a run with my friend, he pulled in next to me and tried to talk about things. I just ended it then and there. I put up with three and a half years of fighting and him ignoring my need for space.
#24 A Fool I Am
We were together for six years. In the final year of university, I noticed all these suspicious signs but I kept being told I was paranoid, so I ignored them. One day, I accidentally saw the dozens of Facebook messages she’d received from other men and it made my world crumble. I realized I didn’t know her at all.
I walked out. I remember waiting for a bus to get to my parents’ house while just running over things in my mind. Later, a resident came out to ask if I was okay. She told me the bus no longer ran from this area and that she’d seen me sitting there for half of the day. I was so upset I didn’t even notice the time passing.
Anyway, I loved her so much that I went back. Big mistake. A leopard doesn’t change its spots and it just meant I had to go through the whole thing again. Since then, I have met someone who is the total opposite. Honest, loyal, fun to be around and we have now also been together six years. I guess everything happens for a reason.
#25 Mistakes On Both Sides
We were together for 10 months. It lasted all throughout our senior year of high school. We had pretty good days and pretty bad ones. There were problems with both of us. She was sort of paranoid about me talking to other girls, and would rather hide behind a screen than come face-to-face with me during an argument. I told her too many “white lies,” I acted pettily, and I just didn’t put enough work into our relationship. She broke it off with me through text the night before my first job interview. We tried to keep in touch but it didn’t last long and she ended up blocking me on most social media. I wish we didn’t end things badly.
#26 A Beginning And An End
We played riskily and she got pregnant. A whole rollercoaster of emotions followed. It wasn’t right for us and everything was complicated. Neither of us wanted to live the rest of our lives with a thorn in the soles of our feet. We didn’t want to raise a child in a broken situation. We found a happy, stable couple who couldn’t bear children to adopt our child. We stuck together through the pregnancy but had lots of ups and downs. Shortly after childbirth, we consoled each other one last time, forgave each other for the mess we mutually created, and we both moved on with our lives.
#27 Once A Cheater…
She cheated on me very early in our relationship. She claimed I never officially asked her to be my girlfriend so she didn’t think we were together. I was young and dumb, so I gave her another chance. Things were going pretty well for a little over a year.
Then, one day, she told me she wanted me to come over, so I excitedly went to her house. She had gathered all my stuff and it was sitting at the door. She was so cold. It was like she was a completely different person. She didn’t want to talk about it whatsoever, she just wanted me gone. She had a two-year-old daughter that I had grown really close to and she wouldn’t even let me say goodbye to her.
Soon after, she told me it was because she “knew what I was doing when she wasn’t around,” which was literally nothing. A few years later, she finally told me that she had been regular hooking up with the dude she cheated on me with. It’s been five years since we broke up and she’s still trying to get me to go out with her again and help raise her two children. No thanks.
#28 Overly Dependent Damage
He didn’t like that I went back to university to pursue a new career in nursing. I had less time for him and I didn’t know then that I was enabling a lot of his behaviors. Depression can be crippling, I know, but at 21 we hardly had intimacy. He wanted to sleep in all day and never get out of bed. If he was mad at me, he’d ignore me for a whole week and not call me or pick up the phone. We dated for two years.
One weekend, I told him I had to study for a biochemistry exam and he wasn’t happy about it. He hung up the phone on me and I decided this time I wouldn’t call him back. I needed to do what was right for me. I was 22 at this point, with my own car and new friends. My parents would invite him out to come out for dinner and he would say he would, then not show up. He had no interest in my life and making me happy.
After a week of not talking, he deleted me from Facebook and put “single” on his status. I was heartbroken and it was my first real heartbreak. I lost a ton of weight and nearly failed that semester of school. He tried messaging me a couple of weeks later about a computer I wanted. No text, just a link to this certain computer he knew I was looking for. I knew it could lead to us talking again but I was done. I needed to move on.
#29 Got Out In Time
We got together when we were 17, and right from the get-go, it wasn’t a great relationship. There were a lot of weird “rules” like not hanging out on certain days because that was his “time for the boys” and I was not allowed to intrude on such rituals. We dated for six and a half years, and over that time things got progressively worse.
He was an angry, insecure person who beat me down to feel better, calling me a liar, dramatic, stupid, annoying, and selfish. He constantly twisted anything mean he did into it being my fault and made me apologize to him for “calling him a jerk” when I told him he hurt my feelings. Once, when I got back from a trip to Vegas, he picked me up to go to his cabin and I waited ten minutes for him to ask me a single question about it. Finally, I just started to tell him about it anyway, and all he did was slowly turn up his music until I was shouting over it and just gave up.
The final straw that did it for me was the time he almost got us into a bad car accident because he was angry his stepbrothers weren’t going to be at the cabin for as long as they initially said they would. After we almost crashed into an electrical pole—don’t know how we stopped in time—he spat the word “sorry” at me like it was poison. All I could say was I don’t know how he thought driving like that was even necessary. He later told me that me talking back to him like that made him want to hit me.
#30 “Ruining” His Life
He told me that being with me was ruining his life. This was a couple of years after he had cheated on me right in front of my face and I had somehow taken him back, forgiven him for everything, and put it all in the past. His “ruining my life” comment was because he was closeted, I was not, and he was worried that I would end up outing him.
I took him at his word and solved his problem by leaving him. He could ruin his own life and stop blaming it on me. I found out about six months later that he’d been cheating on me the entire time, which he confessed on a phone call.
#31 Flawed Genes
He said he would never have kids with me because he was “afraid they would be autistic.” He said my genes were flawed because of that. I’ve never been diagnosed with autism even after several years of therapy. He ended up proposing to a girl less than a year after we broke up—after she had his child. She left him soon after his proposal. His child, ironically enough, has autism.
#32 Bad Kinky Transitions
I discovered I was kinky and our relationship couldn’t survive the journey into BDSM and non-monogamy. I dated this incredibly intelligent dude with luscious locks and I truly thought that he would be my future husband. Even his mother would introduce me as her future daughter-in-law. I was definitely welcomed as part of the family by his loving, hippie parents. Right before high school graduation, it dawned on me that I was kinky and insisted upon exploring this by becoming active in the local BDSM scene. Unfortunately, neither of us truly had the experience or communication skills to successfully make these transitions. In the end, I regret not being more patient, understanding, and accommodating for him.
#33 Too Much Togetherness
We were toxic and crazy about each other. I’d drop him off at night and we’d stand in the doorway holding each other for hours sometimes like we couldn’t bear to be apart. So dramatic, right? But really we wanted to be around each other all the time. Eventually, it built up to a point where that insane energy just wasn’t sustainable. We started arguing constantly and then making up constantly.
It was a crazy cycle for about a year. We were teenagers and I honestly believe we didn’t know how to be in a proper relationship. So many things we could have maybe fixed if we were older and more mature, but I think that’s the point of young love. Maybe you’re meant to screw it up. Maybe it’s not meant to work out right the first time.
#34 Changes Became Poison
We were young and she didn’t know what she wanted. I put her before literally everything and became complacent with the things I was supposed to be doing. As we grew older, we started to change. It mixed together to become a poison to our relationship and we carried its corpse for about a year before we both decided to let it be and go our separate ways. The relationship was nice and we loved each other, but we are both humans and unfortunately, we messed up too often.
#35 Secrets Struggle To Last
We were roommates in college. We clicked instantly but he was still figuring his preferences out. We lived with seven other dudes in a four-bedroom apartment. We both agreed to keep the relationship a secret and tried to portray the “just friends” vibe to the rest of the roommates. Eventually, they got curious and started spying on us.
They never really found anything concrete but since they had their suspicions, they brought it up to my significant other first. He denied it, but twisted the truth a little too much, saying I was an overbearing friend. So then all the roommates confronted me and I didn’t take it too well seeing as how they twisted a lot of words.
They were accusing me of harassing my significant other and said that I was too gay to fit in with them (Side note: I was open about my preferences). My pride got in the way and I told them all to beat it. When my significant other tried to talk to me about it, he blamed me for not being reasonable and accepting everything that was said to me so we could still be together. It was a very abrupt end to a very good year in my life. My first love.
#36 Extreme Toxicity
The relationship had gotten toxic. In fact, 90% of the time we were together, it was toxic but I only saw it when it got really bad in its last year. She would emotionally manipulate me; pick at my every insecurity until I’d snap and tell her “ENOUGH!” Then she’d play the victim. I’d feel terrible and apologize.
She destroyed friendships by telling friends how awful I was. Then suddenly, my friends would be yelling at me for being a bad person. She was so good at playing innocent. She had been cheating on me behind my back for years and when I’d suspect things, she’d feed me lines about trust and how awful I was for not trusting her. I continued to try to make myself believe her lies even with the evidence right in front of me.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no saint. I probably said and did some stupid things over the years. But even months of apologizing and trying to make up for stupid little things weren’t enough. In all honesty, when she dumped me, it was a relief. I’d been wanting to do it for months but couldn’t bring myself to do it. \
I pretended to be upset and I actually did a very poor acting job so I’m surprised she bought it. We had been together for almost six years. I told her so many of my secrets. I trusted her. Later on, I found out she told all her friends all that stuff, she told her new boyfriends about all my insecurities after we broke up.
#37 Too Opposite To Attract
We were too different. We were in love in the beginning and liked each other’s opposite behaviors; but by the end, it was really bad. We fought about everything. He eventually moved to another state and I didn’t want to go. He had no plans and just thought I’d be okay to crash with his friends with until he found work. I’m not a nomad! That could take a long time; everyone knows that. I crave stability, so I told him to forget it. I’m glad it’s over. Sometimes, I dream that all the positive changes that I went through never happened and that we could still be together.
#38 Ran Out Of Common Ground
I realized that we were too different and he was always putting his friends and activities in front of me. If he had to choose between spending the evening with me and with his friends, there was no doubt for him. Also, I realized that we never had anything to talk about. The silences were awkward and I started to drift away. He almost didn’t notice.
I talked to him about my feelings nine months before our breakup and he tried to adjust everything. But after three years of a relationship like that, it was too late for me. I realized I didn’t love him anymore. I broke up with him two weeks after his graduation because I didn’t want to stress him out right before it. He said that he still loved me but he didn’t want to stop me. I knew he did, but I couldn’t see a future.
#39 First Kiss To First Broken Heart
She was my first kiss when I was 14. After that, we were together all of high school. I was hooked. Nobody had ever made me laugh or made me as happy as she did. She went to college in Northern California and I did in Southern California. We did the long-distance thing for a year and all was well.
During my sophomore year of college, I went to study abroad for a semester in Europe. We still stayed together. We Skyped every other day, left voicemails to each other when we couldn’t answer our phones, etc. One time, I was at a nightclub with my exchange friends in Amsterdam, and two female Swedish roommates invited me over to their place. My response: “Sorry, I have to go back to my hotel and Skype my girlfriend.” I was too in love to even think about anyone else, even after dating for five years.
I came home after seven months of being on another continent and we had the best summer of our lives together. I’ll never forget the feeling of excitement in my gut knowing that I was going to see her and spend the day with her. Life was so easy with her and I was so happy.
She went back up north for the following school year. We got busier with school and I was also working two jobs at the same time. The long-distance started to hurt. I could feel things were getting harder. She began doing a lot of extracurricular stuff at school and hanging out with a lot of new people, and so did I. We both started getting overcome with jealousy little-by-little.
I was too young and immature to realize the big picture of it: we genuinely loved and cared for each other and we’d never hurt the other. We got too caught up in the petty things that now seem ridiculous for anyone to care about at my current age. We had one tearful, long phone call one night. I still remember the entire conversation. We broke up after nearly six years over the phone because of the long distance. I would’ve done anything to at least end it in person.
#40 Chose Another Commitment
Flashback to sophomore year in high school—the first real girlfriend I’ve ever had. She was the “bring her home to meet the parents” type. I very truly and dearly loved this girl. She was a senior. Once she graduated, we continued dating. She was working while I was still going to school every day, but we always made time for each other.
I stayed the night at her house at least four times a week. We were so compatible with each other, constantly laughing, smiling… the works. I genuinely saw a future with this girl and I wanted nothing else. Of course like any relationship, there were occasional rough patches but nothing ever too serious. It felt as though every rough time we worked through, we came out together stronger.
Fast forward to us two years later–I was a senior at this point, getting ready to graduate from high school. I was going about my normal routine: finish my morning classes, get dismissed by 11 and go to my girlfriend’s house. Only, when I walked through her door, I could immediately feel the tension in the air.
After about 10 minutes of small talk, she hits me with it: “I have some news to talk to you about.” At this point, my stomach couldn’t twist itself any further into knots. She told me that she signed her paperwork for the USMC and that she was to leave in two weeks. I was speechless. I knew right then and there that that was the end of our relationship.
The love of my life, the only girl I had ever loved, gone, just like that. I harbored some serious resentment towards her for some time. I still loved her with my whole heart and could never truly be mad at her. The news to me, mind you, hadn’t even been brought up until that day. I had no idea she even had plans to talk to a recruiter much less sign up and get ready to ship out. And that was that. A part of me still misses her. She will always be “the one that got away”.
#41 Prenup Problem
I was ready to propose. I went to her dad for his blessing, but he informed me that he would not allow the marriage to happen until my girlfriend and I both signed a prenup. Her mother agreed with him, and she thought I was being unreasonable by disagreeing. They clearly valued their money more than the relationship, but I didn’t care—all that mattered was what SHE thought of me. So I asked her. Long story short, I was heartbroken. They valued their money more than the relationship and they clearly thought very little of me. That was reason enough to end the relationship. I hope they find a wealthy guy to marry their daughter.
#42 From Abuse To Adventure
She was emotionally abusive. I was completely blind to it for nearly five and a half years. I snapped out of it when we were talking about my grad school applications and she made a snide comment about how I wasn’t allowed to accept any grad school more than 30 miles away. So I did the sensible thing: I accepted a graduate school in a different country, broke up with her, and went on an adventure.
#43 Driven Out Of Love By Differences
Small things started to lead to big problems for me. She was very clingy and would accuse me of cheating. She would make me feel worthless and like I had to stay with her because she was the best I could do. We never were on the same page about the future of our relationship. I wanted to move away for college, while she wanted to stay close to home (we were both in high school at the time).
She was not a very affectionate person. I never would force her to do anything, I would just let her know that I had feelings and I wanted to be shown some more affection. She would not understand what I meant and when I would question her about it, she would cry. I’d end up apologizing for trying to express my apparently unnatural feelings.
Don’t get me wrong, I was not the best for her either. I was a bit self-absorbed and would occasionally be mean to her. I was still a teenager, craving excitement and attention like most teenagers do, meaning I would be stupid sometimes. I also was dealing with a lot of personal problems and could not relay that to her because of the issues we had.
The entire relationship made me feel unloved. I didn’t want to be in a relationship with her and I fell out of love. I still felt like I had to be with her and stayed with her for a few more months before awkwardly breaking up with her at school.
#44 One-Way Street
I realized right after our six-month anniversary that I had done everything in the relationship. I planned every date, I made every effort to be a part of her life, I woke up early (even though I’m a night owl) to see her before her 8 a.m. class. I would constantly be driving to her house 45 minutes away from me.
She never did any of that for me. She never planned anything for us (but her best friend did, who is still a close friend of mine to this day). She would cancel on me or give me pushback whenever I tried to make things happen. She drove to my house twice. When I tried introducing her to my life and my friends, she would literally be cringing the entire time.
I was really head over heels for her, though. Over our spring break, I decided to not go on a trip to New Orleans with my friends in case she wanted to spend time with me. However, I kind of wanted to experiment and see if she wanted to plan something. I talked to her weeks before saying that I couldn’t wait for us to spend time together over spring break and such.
Instead of reaching out, I opened it up for her to plan something, letting her initiate the conversations and such over the week. She texted me once, and our convo lasted 10 minutes before she left.
#45 Too Many Problems To Last
Our long-distance relationship ended due to miscommunication, immaturity and basically giving up on both of our parts. We lived together while we finished school but he wanted to move back to a big city eight hours away. I was supportive but really upset. I never voiced my feelings about the move and really wanted to break it off.
But he was my first love and the first person who I completely trusted, so I held on. Calls got missed, FaceTime calls stopped, we wouldn’t text each other back for days. Instead of trying to talk through our fights, we just wanted to win them. I stopped wanting to confide in him about issues I was having and he did the same.
I was angry and he was violently depressed, stuck in a dead-end job. We had talked about going on a break for a while but decided we really wanted to make it work. I realized we were on two very separate paths and I still loved him, so I started trying to fix it. I started being more honest and setting boundaries. Calling more, texting more and trying to set up a trip to go see each other.
It worked for a while, but it was a little too late. He broke up with me with a text after I tried telling him about a terrible fight my family was having. He blocked me on everything. I called his mom and eventually, she let me talk to him. He ripped me apart for at least an hour—I mean, horrible things you’d never want to hear. My self-confidence was gone for a long time. I finally realized we had given up on each other a long time ago but stayed out of comfort.
