I started this blog almost a year ago, wrote a few posts, and then vanished. No explanation, no “taking a break” announcement. Just… gone. But honestly? Life got so heavy so fast that blogging felt like the least important thing on my list. I’m back, though. And the reason I disappeared is exactly why I’m writing this series. So let’s get into it.
You know how sometimes you stay in a relationship longer than you should because you keep thinking it’ll go back to how it started?
That was me with Josh.
In the beginning, he was everything. Talkative, affectionate — actually felt like a partner. Like I wasn’t doing life alone. He’s the only person I ever genuinely pictured walking down an aisle toward. And I think that version of him is what I held onto way longer than I should have.
You know how it goes. Love bombing. Seeing someone for their potential instead of the person actually standing in front of you.
But over time, things shifted. It wasn’t one big moment — it was a hundred smaller ones that just kept stacking up.
From the beginning, he’d prioritize other people over me. His ex, his custody situation — and to an extent, I understood it. But that was the first real crack. It made me feel optional. Like I wasn’t solid in his life. And every time I brought it up, I was too sensitive. Too emotional. Too dramatic.
Too something.
Then he found out the kid he’d been fighting for wasn’t biologically his. And I watched something in him just… break. I was there for it. I held him while he cried. I showed up completely.
But at some point it started to feel like he was grieving that loss more than he was investing in what we still had. Like I was standing right in front of him, trying to build something real, and he was somewhere else entirely.
And I was pregnant.
I don’t think you ever really forget how someone treats you when you’re pregnant. Or those first raw months after you give birth, when you need support the most and you’re watching closely whether or not it shows up.
It didn’t.
So it became a pattern. Me needing connection, him pulling back. Me trying harder, him giving less. Resentment building on both sides until we were just… two people missing each other on a loop.
He needed physical connection — that’s how he measured whether things were okay.
I needed to feel chosen. Seen. Like I actually mattered to the person I was building a life with.
And the more those needs went unmet, the worse the cycle got. I couldn’t show up physically when I felt invisible emotionally. Which probably felt like rejection to him. So he’d pull back. Which made me need more reassurance. Which made the distance grow.
We just kept missing each other.
By the end it didn’t feel like a relationship. It felt like coexisting. Shared history, shared responsibility, shared walls — but not a life. Not even close.
I remember sitting at my own kitchen table one night, about a year before the end, watching him flirt with one of my closest friends over a game of Farkle. Right in front of me. Her boyfriend was literally sitting right there — and at a couple points he and I just looked at each other like… what the hell is happening right now. And I just sat there. Not even shocked anymore. Just quiet. That’s when you know something has shifted in you. When you stop reacting because some part of you has already started letting go.
So when I finally said I was done, it wasn’t impulsive. It wasn’t even really a fight.
It was exhaustion. The quiet kind. The kind that shows up after you’ve already run every version of “maybe this can work” through your head a thousand times and come up empty every single time.
