Tom didn’t even try to stop me from leaving. In the end, I sold the wallet, deleted all our photos together, unfollowed and blocked him from all social media, deleted his number from my phone, and tried to move on.
It was only later that I found out from a mutual friend that Tom was a notorious charmer, a player who liked to secretly date multiple women at the same time, simply because he preferred some excitement in his life.
Apparently, because I refused to sleep with Tom a few times, he found me boring and started cheating on me with other girls during the first few months of our relationship.
And I, the idiot, never even knew.
It made me feel so ashamed to this day. It left me with such a terrible insecurity in my heart that I would carry with me for a long time. Tom was my first boyfriend and yet he betrayed me in such a cruel way.
It took me a long time to recover from that.
***
Three years later, after dropping out of college and working several part-time jobs, I met someone new.
His name was Ben Harper.
I decided to give love a second chance after becoming jealous of all my friends who were dating and looking as happy as they could be. Even though I had become so insecure, Ben was mature, and he helped me try to see the world from a different perspective.
He was three years older than me; I was 21 at the time and he was 24. I was still too young to continue working as hard as I was, while he had a stable career after graduation.
We first met in the park when he was walking his dog, a beautiful golden retriever named Lily. I was smitten with Lily at first sight and asked to pet her, which he allowed. He struck up a casual conversation, and after that, the words just flowed so naturally between us.
We started meeting in the park a few times, where I would pet Lily and give her snacks while he struck up a conversation with me. We quickly became friends after sharing some common interests, and I agreed to go on a date when he asked if we could try it out.
I really liked Ben at first. He had a strong sense of responsibility and was very sure of himself. He was very honest and never held anything back, even when it might seem crass. In my heart, it felt refreshing to meet such a personality in this depressing world, so I subconsciously relied on him.
With him, it felt transparent, and I never felt like he was cheating on me because he checked in on me so often and always texted me every morning and night. He was so committed that it was surprising and kind of flattering.
But it was also so, so overwhelming.
As the days passed, and we were only three months into our relationship, he began to become overbearing. Possessive. Too ahead of himself.
Because apparently, for Ben, commitment was a two-way street.
Honestly, it didn’t bother me too much because I believed that was how relationships should work. However, I remembered that I had told him a few times before that I wasn’t really looking for anything too serious and just wanted to keep things casual for now.
“That’s fine with me,” he told me back then in a confident tone of voice. “I won’t force you if you’re not ready.”
With those words, I trusted him.
And later on, my trust in him shattered.
He started to get… impatient. Insecure. His calls and texts increased, his demands grew, and he even started giving me these ridiculous curfews.
I was not supposed to stay out too late at night, even though I worked night shifts some days, and he also told me that I was obligated to inform him wherever I went.
He even convinced me to move in with him so he could protect me, or whatever bullshit excuse that was. He started referring to me as “his,” as if I were some kind of object he needed to possess.
Things were escalating too fast for me, and I felt more and more like a prisoner in the relationship rather than a bird allowed to fly free. It was such a suffocating feeling that I just wanted to get out as soon as possible.
It took me a long time to break free of Ben. I was young at the time, a college dropout who worked several part-time jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, he had a steady job and often bought me food and many other things. He sometimes visited my family and brought them food and gifts as well. My parents adored him for his generosity.
But I felt suffocated. I felt guilty. I felt so conflicted in my mind that I even wondered if it was a good thing for me to break up with him. He helped me financially and was so good to my parents. Who on earth was I to let him go like that? What Ben wanted from me was my dedication and commitment to the relationship. Why was I dawdling? All I needed to do was give him my heart and all of my time. That was all.
My thoughts swirled around like that for a long time.
I had been so trapped in my guilt and hesitation that in the end, my younger siblings, Ken and Louisa, had to finally convince me to let go. That it was not worth the stress to stay.
That if I was unhappy, I needed to break it off.
So I did.
“Let’s break up,” I told him a few days later after collecting my thoughts.
Ben was not happy to hear those words come out of my mouth. He threw a fit and started hitting me, which shocked me because he had always been so gentle. He was demanding and overbearing, but he had never touched or hurt me like that.
It had been messy and unpleasant. Ken and Louisa were outside Ben’s apartment so they could be there for me after I broke it off. But after I screamed loudly, all hell broke loose.
Ken burst in, and he was the angriest I had ever seen him. Louisa was horrified and crying as she called the police on her cell phone.
In the end, Ben was taken in for questioning by the police, and I had to go with them to give my statement. To make the long story short, Ben went to jail, and that was when I found out about his history of assaulting women. I had to get a restraining order against him just in case, but then he was forced to move away.
I never saw him again after that.
And since then, I stopped believing in love.
Love was just a fantasy. In real life, people were never what they seemed. They could be the sweetest and most innocent people I knew, but they would always betray me in the end. I had to learn the hard way that they never really loved me.
It was then that I realized what a pathetic person I really was.
Since love had betrayed me, I might as well never truly love anyone again.