On Why You Should Never Stop Someone from Breaking Up with You (Let them Go!)

While I was growing up my mom continuously had me repeat the words “I am beautiful and enough” to myself in the mirror. Some occasions in humor, others when I needed it. I can still remember it to this day. Time after time, I would look in the mirror and do it with more confidence than the last. I never understood why she had me do this until later on in my adulthood.

After doing my usual Twitter scroll the other day, I came across an article from Thought Catalog titled 10 Little-Known Signs That Your Partner Is Becoming Emotionally Detached (So You Can Stop Them From Breaking Up With You). Now, I’m a fan of TC so this is not at all a hate post to them. I usually agree with their articles and find humor in some of them. This one just struck me all kinds of wrong. Stopping someone from breaking up with you? I can’t possibly be the only one that thinks that sounds like a recipe for one big relationship disaster. That’s when it hit me: we grow up in a world that screams there must be something wrong with you if you do not have a “someone” to call your “someone”.

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so there must be something wrong with her.”
“He breaks up with every girl he’s been with. He must be a player.”

Why isn’t the assumption “she’s alone and enjoying life on her own. No boundaries, she’s discovering who she is.” Or “He realized he wasn’t happy with them. It’s great that he doesn’t want to waste his or their time.”

You’re probably shaking your head at this point. “This girl is engaged with a wedding coming up in less than a month. How can she even begin to understand the need to have someone, when she already has her someone?”

Flashback to five years ago: I was so certain that my high school boyfriend was going to be the guy that I was going to end up with for the rest of my life. Heck, I followed him all the way to college thinking that was just the next step in what our lives were going to be. Looking back, I realized just how wrong I was.

After two semesters, I came home from the university to finish my education at a local community college. We continued our relationship in long distance form and it was tough. There were visits over the holidays and whenever we could make the time, but it wasn’t ideal. The realization had become clear that we had grown up into two different people and we needed to make a decision. We weren’t those same two kids from high school anymore, so was it fair to continue pretending that we still were? Was it worth forcing a relationship that was no longer the same as it was when it had first started out?

The answer was no. We both knew it was time to move on in order to become better and happier versions of ourselves, even if it meant without each other. Coming out of a three year relationship, single life was, well for lack of a better word, different. When it started out I wasn’t sure what to expect. I mean for the last 1,095 days, I had always had a “someone” to call mine. It was time to make another decision, but this time for myself: let single life hinder me or I could embrace it. I chose the latter.

It was a time of doing what I wanted without having to answer to someone else. I dated other guys. I went to parties. I stayed busy. I worked on myself. I thought about him from time to time, wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t changed, and if we had stayed the exact same people.

But, I am so thankful that we didn’t.

The realization is this my friends: that’s not how life works. We’re not intended to stay the same people that we always were. We grow. We change. We develop. We are only cheating ourselves by staying in a relationship that doesn’t allow us to do those three things.

Fast forward to the girl that I am now and the fact that it led me to Ben. Life has a funny way of working out just perfectly if you trust your gut that it will.

If I leave you with anything, I want to leave you with this: you deserve the “someone” that wants to be with you, not the “someone” that you have to force to stay with you. You deserve the “someone” that accepts you for everything that you are and embraces you for it, not the “someone” that you have to change yourself for. If you haven’t found your “someone” yet, don’t sell yourself short. You are beautiful, and you are enough. Repeat it to yourself a few times in the mirror if you need help believing it. It works.