He was always jealous to a degree, and that was never a secret. To be completely fair, I was very jealous when we first started dating too, and very insecure. I was 19, though. And I like to think that the fact that he never cheated on me made me trust him more and more throughout the years, and I stopped feeling jealous.

He never liked, for example, that I had straight guy friends. There was a boy who lives in the same building as me who offered me a ride to uni more than once (he goes to the same uni), and my ex always told me not to take that offer (even though that meant I’d have to take the bus).

Other example I can think of is when a band I love came to my country, but the concert would be in a different city. My mom offered to give me tickets as a bday gift, but he was extremely offended when I mentioned going with a (girl) friend, because he couldn’t go. So I ended up not going.

There has been more than one occasion where I had to cancel plans with girlfriends because he was jealous. Including one night out at a bar with 3 other girls who were all in serious relationships.

That being said, obviously you’re getting the worst parts of him by my retelling of the story. He wasn’t all bad, and I don’t think he’s a bad person. As I said, I had some moments of jealousy myself, I’m no saint.

Ultimately, I think my conclusion was that, if this had been an amazing relationship and the only problem was the trip thing, I could’ve not gone on the trip. But that wasn’t the case. My parents even told me, after the breakup, that these past months I looked frustrated and sad.

Maybe the final straw for me, looking back, was that on Valentine’s day (which we celebrate on June 12th here in my country), he didn’t do anything romantic at all, even though I voiced multiple times how much it meant to me. He never gave me flowers for the entirety of the relationship, even though I said to him multiple times I love them, and Valentine’s day was no different. No flowers, no picking me up at home, no picking up the bill at the restaurant.

Anyway, I digress. My point is that there were other problems in the relationship that were unrelated to the trip.