She had the idea that real love meant being everything for each other — always together, doing everything as one, never apart. But that wasn’t what I believed love needed to be. For me, love is also about breathing room. Space. The ability to maintain who you are within the relationship. I believe that to truly love someone, you need to let them grow as an individual too. That doesn’t mean being distant or disengaged — it means trusting one another enough to live your own lives and still choose to come together.

There needs to be space in a relationship for people to do their own thing, right? Otherwise, you’re just living in each other’s pockets, and that’s where things start to unravel. You lose your sense of self. You lose things to talk about. You lose your identity — and what’s left is two people fused into one, neither of whom are truly whole.

I guess in that sense, She and I were always mismatched. She didn’t really have hobbies or interests of her own. She didn’t have friends in the real world, and she didn’t work. Her whole life was me — and she expected the same from me in return. But I couldn’t give that, not completely. I need creative outreach, time for myself, time to reset and just be me. Without that, I’m not 100%. I’m just not.

I didn’t go out drinking, I wasn’t spending nights at the pub, and I rarely saw my friends — even though I would have liked to. My main outlet was gaming, and even that came with guilt. I felt pressured. Belittled. Made to feel selfish for wanting to spend some time on my own passions, for needing to unwind in a way that didn’t include her. It was like if I wasn’t physically present or giving her my full attention, I was failing somehow. And that pressure only pushed me further away inside.

It got to a point where I couldn’t even take a car ride alone to pick up my daughter. The whole thing would turn into a family outing, even when it didn’t need to be. That might sound sweet to some, but it felt stifling. I know she was bored, I know she didn’t have much stimulation outside of our relationship — but she had options. She could have gotten a job. She could have made friends. I never stopped her. I never tried to control her world. I only wanted to preserve my own.

And the irony is that she gave up our real relationship — this actual life we had together — for a man who lives hundreds of miles away. Someone she has none of that control over. None of that constant attention from. Someone she will rarely even see. She had all these insecurities with me, needed constant reassurance, constant closeness — and yet she chose to throw it all away for someone who can’t possibly meet her in those same ways. It doesn’t make sense. It never will.

Just saying all of this out loud now — or writing it down — it really helps. It’s something I struggled with for so long throughout the relationship, but I couldn’t ever quite articulate it clearly. It always felt like she wanted to keep chasing the honeymoon phase indefinitely — all intensity, all closeness, all-consuming love — but that’s just not sustainable. Real love matures. It deepens. It breathes.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is… we were fundamentally different in what we needed from each other. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love her — I did. Fiercely. But maybe we just saw how love should be differently.

I gave up so much of myself, and it still wasn’t enough. Maybe, I never would have been enough.