When Their “Forever” Turns Out to Be a Sales Pitch
It was emotional breadcrumbing from someone who only liked the idea of me, not the commitment.
My recent reality check- you can’t change someone’s capacity and you certainly can’t love them into readiness.
I stayed long after I knew. Carried something alone that needed two people. Loved what we could be instead of accepting our reality. And when it ended, the hardest part was realizing how much of myself I’d already lost trying to keep him.
Here’s what I’m learning about staying open to the beauty of this life when everything in me wants to build walls.
When my last relationship ended, it ended abruptly and silently.
One month, I was planning to move to another country. I told my family and friends. I let myself believe in someone completely and in a future I’d never allowed myself to imagine before.
And then, almost out of nowhere, I was telling those same people, “Change of plans. Not moving anymore.”
Part of me just shook her head, arms crossed. You know that cynical version of yourself? There she was standing in the corner, like, “We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”
We couldn’t meet each other halfway. Because I finally honored my own boundaries and couldn’t continue to self-sacrifice, the relationship ended.
Just like that. Over.
The shame isn’t just about the relationship failing. It’s about having to untell the story. There’s something raw and human about announcing your future with such hope and certainty, only to have to retract it. Like whispering, “Hey, everyone, remember that whole life I was building? Yeah, well, cancel that.”
I kept wondering if people were thinking, “There she goes again, falling for potential instead of reality.”
They probably weren’t. We’re usually harder on ourselves than anyone else could be.
But I loved him. Deeply. With everything I had.
And when it ended, my heart broke into pieces. I’m still gathering. Like when I hear his laugh in someone else’s voice across a room.
Or when my hand still reaches for my phone, ready to tell him a story from my day, before my brain catches up and says, “Oh right, we don’t do that anymore.”
Grief keeps sneaking in out of nowhere. I’ll be answering emails, half-listening to a podcast, and then my brain pulls up an image of him with an espresso in hand, and my whole body goes still.
The Slow Unfolding
I let my guard drop in a way I never do. I revealed more of myself than I’ve ever allowed someone to see. And I believed he could hold it.
But he was elsewhere, not in body, but in spirit. Not all at once (that would’ve been easier to spot). He slowly drifted, like morning mist dissipating so gradually you don’t notice until the sun is high and it’s gone.
There was this pattern. Tuesday, he’d be present, dreaming our future together, talking about which parts of Europe we’d explore, which restaurants we’d become regulars at. By Thursday, he’d be distant, overwhelmed by the intimacy, finding fault in small things that never bothered him before. Saturday, back to connection, not really apologizing, just smoothing things over. Monday, somewhere in between, and I’d be left trying to figure out which version of him was real.
I kept trying to understand the rhythm. He’s processing. He needs space. We all move at different speeds.
Q: How much space does someone need to know if they want to walk beside you? I still don’t know.
What sits with me is how hard I tried to make it work. I became an expert at reading his moods, at making myself smaller when he seemed overwhelmed, at being less myself so he could be more comfortable.
I saw the signs and thought, “Maybe I’m misreading them.” I believed that patience was love, that waiting was devotion, that if I just loved him correctly, he’d finally feel safe enough to stay.
Sometimes I wonder if we were in two different realities. Like maybe I was experiencing one story while he was living another entirely.
“The privilege of feeling deeply comes with the cost of deepened pain. Even so, it’s a price I’d pay ten times over if it means I remain open. Because the moment I blind myself to life’s sorrows is the moment I blind myself to its wonders.”
The Silence
Communication isn’t just about the words we speak. It’s about capacity (his and mine) and timing. It’s about two people being ready to meet in the same emotional space.
I could have spoken with perfect clarity, but if he couldn’t receive it, my words would just echo in the space between us.
I learned this the hard way, through conversations where I’d pour my heart out and he’d look at me like I had completely lost my mind. We were operating on completely different wavelengths.
Clarity is our gift to give. Understanding is theirs to receive.
When we reached our final impasse, after I finally honored my own needs, he chose distance. He mailed back all the things I’d moved to our apartment in Switzerland.
No note. No explanation. Just all my things waiting outside my front door in Arizona.
Inside was the framed photo of us from his bedside, the clothes hanging in “my” corner of his closet, the gifts I brought when we were trying so hard to make the distance feel shorter. All of it returned like something that didn’t fit anymore.
Each item felt like a small goodbye he couldn’t say out loud.
I reached out once. My text asked “I don’t want to live in uncertainty or guess your intentions. Is this relationship over?”
Silence. No Reply.
Seasons have changed. Friends have stopped asking about him. Life has moved forward even when I felt stuck in that moment of waiting.
That silence taught me something profound: Sometimes the absence of words is the clearest communication of all. Eventually people show us their true colors not through what they say, but through what they can’t.
His inability to respond was, in its own way, the most honest thing he’d given me ever.
Because someone who claims to love you doesn’t mail your life back without a word. They don’t leave you hanging for months, wondering if you’re still together. And they certainly don’t punish you with silence for having boundaries.
The Pattern That’s Really a Teacher
I somehow attract partners who struggle with emotional intimacy. It’s not their fault or mine. It’s just a pattern.
They arrive with intellectual conversation and careful boundaries. We can talk for hours about philosophy, art, the state of the world, but ask them how they feel about us, about me, about themselves, and suddenly there’s somewhere else they need to be.
I open my heart (here we go again) and they pause.
You know that moment? When someone realizes they’re in deeper waters than expected? That flash of panic in their eyes before they start swimming back to shore?
At first, there’s this kind of fascination, like I’m some kind of rare thing. But honestly, I’m not special. I’m neurodivergent and have a habit of asking uncomfortably honest questions. I tend to lack a filter and say the things most people think.
Then comes the retreat.
That depth becomes “intensity.” That authenticity becomes “too much.” That difference becomes “difficult.” The very things that drew them in become the reasons they pull away.
Most people…
Say they want depth until it asks them to be vulnerable.
Desire real connection until it means examining their own patterns, their own wounds, their own fears.
Want intimacy until intimacy requires them to stay present when things get uncomfortable, when the conversation moves past theory into feeling.
People often want the idea of things more than the things themselves.
And that’s okay. We’re all learning our own capacity for closeness.
I kept trying to earn love from someone who didn’t have it to give.
I was offering depth while he was comfortable in the shallows. Neither is wrong, they just don’t meet.
He was fixated on everything I wasn’t. So consumed by my flaws and what I was missing that he never truly saw who I was.
I kept trying to be enough for someone who was determined to find me lacking.
I was carrying the weight for someone who was half in and half out, the only one who treated the relationship as something precious to hold onto.
Finding My Own Rhythm
Sitting at dinners and hearing stories about proposals, marriages, children, and long-term plans while you’re still untangling what happened to your own love story teaches humility.
I smile. I celebrate with them. I mean it (joy shared is joy doubled). But there’s this small part of me that feels like I’m watching life through a window.
Everyone else is inside at the celebration, and I’m in the garden, learning to appreciate the stars. They’re planning these long-term milestones while I’m still processing why my life continues to look like one car crash after another.
Sometimes I really do wonder if I’m meant to walk a different path. I’m not out here chasing love. Most of the time, it feels like a background question rather than the main storyline.
Maybe my life isn’t about finding “the one,” but about helping people grow. Being the person who cracks something open in them, even if they move on after. A lot of the time, it feels like I’m the person people meet before they meet their person. It’s a strange role. Just… different.
There’s a kind of sadness in being the one who opens heart, but not the one who gets to live there.
What if the very thing we think disqualifies us from love is actually preparing us for something greater?
The Exhaustion
People say “focus on yourself” like it’s simple. Like rebuilding your identity is a weekend retreat rather than a complete reconstruction. Like you can meditation-app your way through heartbreak.
“You’re so strong.” “You always rise.” “You’ll be fine.”
And yes, I am strong. I do rise. I will be fine. But what if we honored the in-between spaces, too?
What if we acknowledged that sometimes strength looks like admitting you’re tired? That rising requires first being willing to rest on the ground? That being fine doesn’t mean you’re not also grieving?
It’s okay to be tired of being resilient. It’s human to want someone else to be the safe harbor for once. To want to be held instead of always holding it together, and even the one who gets taken care of instead of always being the caretaker.
Learning to Hold Myself with Grace
But something is emerging, whether I planned it or not: I’m learning to offer myself the love I kept hoping to receive from others.
Not in that Instagram-inspiration way where you buy yourself flowers and call it self-care. But in a deep way. The unsexy way. The sitting-with-yourself-at-3-AM-when-everything-is-falling-apart way. The way that says, “I’m here. I’m never leaving you. You’re safe.”
I’m protective of who I am now. It took a lot to get here. By choosing myself isn’t giving up on love. It’s refusing to abandon myself in the pursuit of it.
I’m holding my own heart with the same tenderness I offered so freely to others. To speak to myself the way I’d speak to my best friend going through this. With kindness and patience. With the understanding that healing isn’t linear, that some days you move backward, and that’s okay too.
And it’s teaching me something profound: The love you seek from others must first start within yourself. You deserve to be loved first, fully, without conditions.
Who knows, maybe that person exists. Someone who sees intensity as passion, depth as beauty, and sensitivity as strength.
Or maybe they don’t.
And I’m finding peace in not knowing. To live in the uncertainty without trying to control the outcome.
Setting Ourselves Free
I was ready to reshape my entire life for someone who couldn’t even give me a goodbye.
When I think about the version of me who was preparing a life in Geneva, studying French every week, planning which cafés I’d become a regular at, researching new areas, and imagining our Sunday routines, I want to hug her.
That hopeful, beautiful soul who believed love could overcome any hurtle.
I want to tell her: Love shouldn’t feel like you’re constantly proving your worth. Real love expands you instead of diminishing you. Real love makes you more yourself, not less.
His silence isn’t about my value. It’s about his capacity. We can only give what we have. And perhaps he gave what he could, even if it wasn’t enough.
I believe this with my whole heart.
You know what actually impresses me now? Kindness. Presence. The way someone treats a stranger who can do nothing for them. How they handle disappointment. Whether they can sit with discomfort without running. Whether they can acknowledge when they’re wrong. Whether they choose happiness over being right.
That’s the foundation. Everything else is just a facade.
What Comes Next
I want someone who can witness me fully and say “thank you for trusting me with this” without trying to fix or save me. Someone who sees partnership as a team and says, “Let’s figure this out,” instead of disappearing into silence.
I want my heart open and walk through this world knowing that I am worthy of the very thing I’ve been giving away so freely. Even though it sometimes feels like walking through the world without armor and building a wall would hurt less.
I’d rather feel everything than feel nothing at all.
To close ourselves to pain is to close ourselves to joy. They arrive together, always.
The cost of closing myself to the beauty of life would exceed the cost of remaining open. Because a life half-lived, half-felt, half-experienced isn’t a life at all.
It’s survival.
New Beginnings
Pain changes people. Sometimes it makes us smaller, more careful, more guarded. But sometimes it makes us more spacious, compassionate, into something you’d never imagine.
I’m not burying this pain. or bypassing it with positive thinking or gratitude lists. I’m alchemizing it into fuel. Into focus. Into something so fierce that it has no choice but to succeed.
Rock bottom is sacred ground. It’s where we discover what’s truly unshakeable within us. It’s where illusions fall away and truth remains. The center where we stop pretending and start becoming.
The people who leave make space we never would have created on our own. Their absence opens possibilities we couldn’t see before. And in that space, we finally meet versions of ourselves we didn’t even know were waiting.
Life doesn’t give us what we want. It gives us what we need. It transforms us into who we’re destined to become.
And maybe the breaking is how the light gets in.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what was supposed to happen all along.
Until next time,
🖤 Joni @ The Rebirth Files
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