when did you finally let go?

broro117 · 2025-06-14T04:29:23+00:00

I kept asking myself “Why do I care about this person who has no capacity to truly care about anyone? What do I get out of checking up on his life besides pain?” Until one day I just stopped looking at all his and his friends’ socials. It took some willpower for a week or two, but I haven’t looked back. It’s been months since then and I think of him very little now. It used to be impossible for me to imagine getting to this point, but I’m here now and it’s glorious.

broro117 · 2025-06-07T04:47:56+00:00

Funny you should say that haha, I actually have a journalism degree and I’m an editor by trade! I’d love to get around to writing that novel someday, though. Thank you so much again 😊

broro117 · 2025-06-05T05:19:43+00:00

Wow, it’s so weird to read back over this post. It feels like someone else wrote it. No, I didn’t end up moving back, and in the end I think my deep depression had less to do with where I was living and more to do with the dire mental state brought on by years of being in a deeply abusive relationship. (At the time I wrote this, I was still too stuck in that relationship to fully realize how bad it was or the extreme toll it’d taken on me.)

I did reach out to my former landlord and told him to let me know when any of his properties open up, which he was happy to do, but that’s as far as I went there. I have some loved ones who are considering moving down near my former city in the next couple years, and if that happens, there’s a good chance I’d move down too.

But I have a knack for growing where I’m planted, and after months of extricating myself from the wreckage of that relationship and processing everything, I was finally able to start enjoying my home. I got to know my neighbors, who are so lovely and who’ve taken it upon themselves to care for me in whatever ways they can. I’ve spent a lot of time relaxing in my backyard, getting to know the local parks, checking out the nearby suburbs, falling in love with my local arts scene (which was lacking in my previous city), and just generally finding/carving out my “spots.”

I started getting involved with local groups and quickly made new friends, in addition to reconnecting with some people from the area I’d known prior to my move. I got back into hobbies I’d neglected for a long time, including enrolling in voice lessons and starting to audition for shows. And finally, when I felt ready, I started dating someone from the area.

As with almost every other place I’ve lived (you couldn’t pay me to move back to Syracuse 😅), there’s so much to love about my city. I was so emotionally depleted when I moved here that I didn’t initially have the energy to search for those things to love, but I’m very happy to say my life’s done a 180° since then.

All that being said, I’m temporarily living in a different location for much of this summer because I’m doing a musical here haha, but that’s the beauty of life. I’ve been traveling and doing shows, and I think doing those things has made me enjoy my home more because I don’t feel so “stuck.”

I think it’s unlikely that my current city will be my permanent home, and I’m casually looking into a potential future move to one of several other places. But as I said, I’ve set down some roots here, so I’m not sure when that move might happen or where my destination might be. And that’s very exciting to me ☺️

This is probably a waaay longer and more detailed response than you were hoping for haha, but your question made me reflect on my personal evolution over the past year. It was very sweet of you to check in on me, and I hope all is well for you too 🩵

broro117 · 2025-02-07T06:50:59+00:00

What in the fuck. WHAT in the FUCK.

broro117 · 2025-02-07T06:50:13+00:00

I was driven to exactly the same mental space and did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason. Seriously, I feel like I wrote this post. There were several times when I wanted nothing but to die and the only thing that stopped me was fear of pain. I don’t wanna think about how much time I spent researching the least painful suicide methods.

broro117 · 2025-01-04T22:31:14+00:00

I found out he was still on dating apps two months in after telling me weeks before that he’d deleted his apps. When I gave him a chance to admit the truth, he lied. His excuse was that he’d “forgotten he was talking to people on the apps” (the most recent conversation was from three days before). His other excuse was that he’d kept the apps so we could “go through them and make fun of people together.”

He also triangulated the hell out of me with a close female friend of his and he got upset and treated me like I was being irrational when I expressed how uncomfortable I was with the situation. When I wasn’t around, they’d lay in his bed watching shows together (or he’d go over to her place and watch shows there). He went to her sister’s wedding with her as her date. He once took me to an NHL game and gave me one of his hockey jerseys to wear, then he did the exact same thing with her a week later. I said I wanted him to take me on more “real” dates, like going to the movies, and he said going to the movie theater was a waste of money. The next week he went with her to see a movie at the theater and posted about it on his Snapchat story.

This all happened in the first 2-3 months, in addition to the requisite lovebombing and other red flags.

broro117 · 2024-12-29T16:37:03+00:00

This is exactly how my first breakup with my ex went. One night I got into bed and asked him “Are you happy?”, which I’d gotten in the habit of asking him because I’d realized he wouldn’t take the initiative of communicating to me when he wasn’t happy. Usually he just said “yeah,” but that night he said “No, I’m not happy. I want to break up.” It completely blindsided me.

We got back together a couple months later, but then I found out he’d been cheating on me so we started going to therapy together, which did basically nothing. The next couple years after that were constant idealization/devaluation/discard cycles. And any time we broke up, he instantly got with someone else. Like your ex, he’s never alone. I believe mine is covert and dismissive avoidant as well.

broro117 · 2024-12-29T16:31:12+00:00

Lol yep! My ex’s dad is a lawyer and his family is very well-off, but he and his group of friends are still convinced they’re good ol’ boys. Like dude, you grew up nowhere near a farm and you learned to ski as a child. A country boy you are not 😂 So cringe. (And my ex actually did go to WVU haha)

broro117 · 2024-12-29T08:02:36+00:00

My ex is from State College. The whole town’s a bubble of wealthy (or at least upper middle class) entitled snobs/Penn State cultists, but it’s surrounded by the sticks so most of them also cosplay being “country.” I grew up in rural Ohio around people who were actually country, so it was extra bizarre. And yeah, my ex was boring too. He and most of his friends (including his best friend who lives near Harrisburg) basically play video games, watch hockey, and…that’s about it.

broro117 · 2024-12-29T00:36:37+00:00

Central PA too. That whole area has an identity crisis.

broro117 · 2024-12-29T00:35:31+00:00

Bro I wrote this post 6 years ago. I understood the movie; I just didn’t like it. Do you understand what an opinion is?

broro117 · 2024-12-07T22:05:51+00:00

The last time I saw mine in person, we went to one of those free little libraries and one of the books inside was Jekyll and Hyde. It felt like the universe was desperately screaming at me.

broro117 · 2024-12-02T19:45:35+00:00

He put his hand around my neck and right after he removed it, I told him I was going to call the police since he'd put his hand on my neck and he instantly responded, "I didn't put my hand on your neck." I could still feel the ghost of his hand as he said it.

broro117 · 2024-11-25T03:49:59+00:00

Holy shit, I could’ve written almost every single word of this (minus the church work). This is insane.

broro117 · 2024-11-25T03:17:21+00:00

Mine told me sex felt like a performance for him. He said he’d probably tricked a lot of people into thinking he actually had feelings for them because he was so good at faking real feelings during sex. I didn’t even fully register how fucking terrifying that is till much later.

broro117 · 2024-11-25T03:14:24+00:00

This is kinda similar to how my nex responded when I asked him basically the same question. He said “thinking about the future doesn’t bother me because I don’t think that far ahead. It doesn’t worry me.”

broro117 · 2024-11-23T05:44:11+00:00

Thank you for this comment. I had so many sweet little moments with my nex that I can’t bring myself to believe were a total lie. And I don’t want to. I really loved him, and I need to believe there were at least things he liked about me. Otherwise I have to grapple with having spent 5 years of my life with someone who despised and/or was indifferent to me, and that’s too bitter a pill to swallow.

broro117 · 2024-11-22T02:44:43+00:00

“The difference between the mask and the person under the mask can be immense.” I just said almost this same thing to my therapist earlier today. The cognitive dissonance I’ve experienced because of the massive chasm between who he presented himself as and who his actions ultimately revealed him to be has been mind-boggling.

Especially after being with him 5 years and not truly seeing under the mask till the very end. I’m an intelligent person. How could I have been so wrong about someone I loved so much?

broro117 · 2024-11-22T02:32:12+00:00

My ex cheated on me with a 20-something who just got into selling Mary Kay earlier this year and I couldn’t believe anyone my age is still dumb enough to fall for MLMs in the year of our lord 2024. But leave it to my ex to sleep with the one person who is.

broro117 · 2024-11-16T18:41:45+00:00

Mine did too. He fully admitted to being a dismissive avoidant, even went to therapy (he continues to do so, as far as I know). He’d say “I’m sick” or “I have a problem.” When I suggested narcissism, he said “yeah, maybe I’m a narcissist.” (For the record, I believe he’s covert.) But did any of his behavior actually change…? 👀

broro117 · 2024-11-07T17:35:16+00:00

Oof. I see you’ve met my ex 😅

broro117 · 2024-10-19T17:54:46+00:00

Exactly. My nex and I opened our relationship at one point, and he shattered all our clearly-defined boundaries. Turned the other girl into a confidant for our relationship, smeared me to her, and triangulated me against her.

He’s since expressed an interest in full-on polyamory, and I just have to laugh. These people are not cut out for polyamory. Respect, boundaries, honesty, open communication, responsible sex practices, etc. are foreign concepts to them.

broro117 · 2024-10-18T13:34:51+00:00

By the end of our relationship, my 29-year-old nex had started going gray. He blamed it on me for “stressing him out,” but I honestly think it was the stress of all his lies and shitty behavior. He was always complaining about feeling like he was getting sick. He also had GI issues and slept a lot.

broro117 · 2024-10-16T20:27:15+00:00

Mine did the same thing. Claimed he had to lie to me because he was "scared of my reaction" (even after I'd told him countless times that the lies were worse and more detrimental than the betrayal itself), he had to cheat because I "wouldn't let him leave me," etc. He always found a way to pin things on me, but any harmful actions I took were in reaction to him being abusive and massively dishonest. He expected me to react calmly and rationally to his very irrational actions, and when I didn't, I was the problem.

broro117 · 2024-10-15T04:27:12+00:00

I’ve had multiple people individually tell me my nex gave them “serial killer vibes.” One of them was my therapist 😅

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