My name is Conner and I am 20 years old, I will be 21 this May.
I’m in love with an amazing girl who I had the honor of being with for roughly 1 year 8 months (She will be 19 this August). She broke up with me the beginning of last week. Now, it was entirely my fault for making some really stupid mistakes…
Now, I do want to say I never cheated on her. This isn’t like that, but it’s still something I’m ashamed of.
After we had been together for just over a year, which was really just incredible for us, we started running into some issues. Well, I started having issues. I made the mistake of growing complacent and comfortable in our relationship. And what I mean by that is I stopped showing her how much she means to me, I stopped trying to come up with new ways to show my love. This doesn’t mean I didn’t care, believe me. I love her with all my heart. But I think since everything was still new to me, I really didn’t know how to to any of that. You see, she is, well was, my first girlfriend. And I know a lot of you may instantly think puppy love, and that my situation isn’t a big deal since I’m so young. I’ve been told that you will always feel like this the first few girls you meet, and you’ll just need to get over them and move on.
My brother is an exception to the whole puppy love thing. He is about to have his second child with his first girlfriend, now wife. Whenever someone tells me it’s just puppy love, I look at how happy my brother is and I know it’s all BS. Now, I’m not saying it might not be puppy love. Time will tell, since it happened so recently. But I do know that everything I felt during our relationship, was genuine. I was genuinely in love with her, I wanted to spend my life with her. She was really a special girl. She was funny, and kind, and smart. And so beautiful…
And she cared about me. She loved me with every fiber of her soul with such a selfless love. She always supported me in whatever I did, and I supported her. She had always dreamed of traveling around, seeing and learning new things, and starting a family. It didn’t take me long after getting to know her to come to the conclusion that she was the girl I wanted to marry. I wanted to call her my wife, I wanted to come home to her every single day and see her smile.
Now, I’ll tell you what happened between us…
Like I said, I stopped trying. Mistake #1.
That lasted a few months before I was finally able to show her the love she needed. But another issue arose, again, with me. I’ve never been able to open up myself to anyone, and I think I get it from my dad. It’s just hard for me, and I don’t really know how. This always hurt her because she poured herself out to me on many a sleepless nights, crying and confiding in me. And I was never able to do the same. To the point sometimes she questioned if she really even knew me at all…that really hurt me.
Even to this day, I have trouble with it…and I think it is something only time can heal…
That was mistake #2, though I’m not sure if I could even have helped it…
Next, there was the third issue. I had grown complacent in where I’m at right now in life. Let me tell you about that, though it shames me to do so. I’m 20, as I said. I’ve barely taken any college courses, literally, only 1 class. My only job right now is being a bagger at a commissary on a military base. So I’m behind academically and I work on tips, bringing home anywhere between $5-50 a night. I play video games most of the day. Her problem was I cared nothing for my future, I was doing nothing to build one. I was content to just live at home with my parents, suck up to random strangers in hopes of getting a few bucks, and I was not taking my education seriously. These are all valid concerns. I know, trust me, I do.
Mistake #4.
this one is simple and does not need a drawn out explanation, it doesn’t need excuses. I made a lot of promises I wasn’t able to keep. I promised I would change numerous times and each time I let her down and I can never take that back…
Now this has all been going on for months, I’d wager the last 7 months or so. I never fully realized just how bad things were getting, how close I was to losing her. She told me numerous times how I needed to start growing up, because she didn’t like where we were going. She felt like our relationship was coming to a stop, and she hated it. But still, I thought things would be fine if we just gave it time…dumb, I know.
Well, the final catalyst was rather small and pitiful. Last week, I was supposed to take a test to get my USAEUR license (I live in Germany, as an American, and we need such a license to drive here). I had been telling her for a long time that I’d get it, and finally, I was going to. But I called the day before and found out that I needed to go to an orientation first, so I’d have to take the test at a later day than I told her. The simple thing to do would be to tell her that, right?
I decided to lie, for who knows what reason. I told her instead that me and my mom had gone down there physically (The day I was supposed to take the test, even though we never did go) to take the test and found out we couldn’t because of the orientation. She was really upset with me, not because I lied (she didn’t know), but just because it still seemed like I was half-assing it. And I felt bad, and probably confessed the lie to her about ten minutes later. I told her I lied and then told her the truth. That was the final straw.
We broke up the same day. I don’t think it was the lie about the license, just the fact that I lied to her period. It was wrong of me to do this, I know, and I would take it back in a heartbeat if I could. But I don’t think that’s what should have ended us…I’ve told white lies before and I’m sure she has told me lies here and there…but that doesn’t excuse me from my actions, for doing it.
She just couldn’t take it anymore. All of the above was hurting her emotionally for months, there were times she was afraid I would leave because I seemed like I was losing interest or because I stopped trying. She was deathly afraid of losing me, she told me numerous times, and I was too stupid to realize just how much I was hurting her…
Now, here’s the current situation.
We broke up the beginning of last week. Since then, I’ve made all the classic mistakes of begging, pleading, groveling, bargaining. Trying desperately to get her to take me back, promising change and everything else. But she wouldn’t have it. She at least told me that she still cares about me, that she still loves me. See, she’s been hurt before by other guys. She’s my first, but I’m not hers. And her instinctive defense to emotional pain now is to numb herself to all her feelings. And whenever I brought us up, whenever I showed her how much I was hurting, it cracked her facade and she began to hurt to. And she didn’t want to, so we agreed to stop talking for awhile. That only lasted a couple days before I broke that with an emotionally-written Facebook message. She told me that we need to move on, focus on ourselves and our own futures. That hurt me a lot because it felt like I was losing her. We were able to talk for a day or so, but then we decided to take another break. Again, I only lasted a couple of days before I sent her yet another message, this time not begging for her to take me back, but simply for confirmation that we’d be able to get back together one day. She couldn’t give me that, she wouldn’t. She simply told me that"Even if we don’t get back together, you’ll still have a future, you’ll be ok…" Those were her exact words.
The last message I sent her was on Tuesday, again just looking for some hope that we’ll have a future together, and she blatantly told me that I needed to stop sending messages like that. I told her that I didn’t want to talk about it right now, I wanted to leave it with her and whenever she decided it was fine to talk again, we would talk.
I haven’t messaged her, or heard from her since. I decided Wednesday to start No Contact and I initially tried to stay of Facebook, but I felt too isolated without it (Pathetic, am I right all you computer addicts?). But I haven’t contacted her yet.
My fear right now is I don’t know if she’s hurting. I don’t know if she misses me or not. I don’t know if she’s numb, and thus she’s able to go about her day completely fine while I struggling to fight down these feelings, to not let them show. But I deserve this I guess. For all those times I made her wonder about us, our future, for those times she was deathly afraid of losing me…I’m getting my own medicine…
I’m prepared to live my life for me, to build myself a future and to do what’s best for me. I can do that. But I can’t, no matter how hard I try, I can’t come to terms with the thought that I may never again get to hold her. I can lose her for a little while, but I can’t lose her forever…I love her with everything that I am, I know that now. It may be too late though…
During this No Contact phase, I intend to make changes. I finally found another job, which I think God gave me as an answer to my prayers for help, and I’m going to CLEP out of my core college classes so I can catch up on those lost two years. I’m studying Business because it will land me a decent job with decent pay. I’m even getting in shape, doing pushups, situps and going for long walks. While I do all of this for me…
I still have the hope that I’ll be the one to walk the love of my life down the isle.