What I found after the furniture was gone
AUTHORS NOTE:
Nothing in this story is an indictment of another person. It’s accountability and ownership of what I chose to do.
This was a love, not villain, story.
I haven’t written about the recent partnership I ended until now because it mattered to me to keep it private while I processed everything that happened, and because it involved someone whose experience I don’t get to or want to narrate. I’m not sharing details of our partnership. I’m sharing impact, ownership, and accountability of how I behaved, because without it, the next chapters don’t make sense.
I’m only sharing this now because without this information, there’s a massive hole in the story of what happened last year and the changes I am making as a result. I am now providing the context. I own and I am accountable for what I did.
Our paths are now permanently disjoined and separate.
What we had is finished and completely over.
I’m now doing what’s right for me, she is now doing what’s right for her.
We are both now on new adventures and journeys in our lives.
Moving forward, I wish nothing but amazing lives, fun adventures, special loves, peace, joy, health, healing, growth, emotional safety, and happiness for both of us.
I see clearly now what lead up to me ending us in the terrible way I chose to:
With distance, and months of internal reflection and processing, I see how much of my fears, insecurities, dysfunctional attachment, traumas, self-hatred, internal shame, and long-standing patterns I brought into the relationship, and how early they were present, even when things looked good on the surface.
My fear of abandonment.
My fear of rejection.
My fear of losing love.
This showed up with my constant scanning for signs that something was about to go wrong, even when nothing was wrong at all. Anytime a potential conflict emerged, I quickly smoothed it out through avoidant behaviors.
I own my internal problems and patterns. Not only for having them, but for how they shaped our space, our time together, and her experience of the entire relationship. I own the damage they caused.
From the very first date forward, I believed that if I did enough, loved enough, gave enough, stayed attentive enough, was flexible enough, was emotionally available enough, solved problems enough, and kept my struggles hidden long enough, everything would remain safe and secure. That everything would be fine.
I believed closeness and secure attachment could be maintained through effort and performance instead of honesty and sharing anything that was going on inside my head. Instead, my fears and insecurities grew exponentially. I avoided being honest and having any real vulnerability. I kept conversations and checkins at the surface level and never went deeper. I never asked for help or partnership with anything I was struggling with. I kept everything nice and smooth, containing it inside myself until my internal instability became bigger than my ability to manage it. I avoided my toxic shadows until they completely overpowered me. I let my internal self-hatred and shame destory everything in my life and destroy the life of the woman I loved and who loved me.
The destructive decisions I own:
A week before her birthday, she walked through the door that evening after a long day away expecting the same welcome she always received, a hug, kiss, and warm welcome home. Before she could even put her things down, I angrily confronted her and abruptly ended the relationship. I gave her two weeks to move out and find somewhere else to live. I told her to never contact me again.
I shifted all of the blame for my personal problems onto her. I continued to avoid myself, my deep self-hatred, my shame, and all of my problems by abandoning her and the partnership. I asked the person who had always stood next to me, who loved me deeply, to move out instead of admitting I had big problems, asking her for any kind of conversation, help, patience, or partnership.
In seconds, I created chaos and major destabilization. The next day I did even more to create unnecessary drama by interfering with her collecting her belongings. Within 24 hours of me ending the relationship, the furniture was gone and our apartment was empty. Almost four years of love and companionship, completely obliterated by my impulsive and avoidant decision.
Throughout all of this, I devastated her. I shattered her sense of safety. I created immediate housing insecurity for her and her dogs by making her homeless. I put that housing burden on her supports and loved ones, giving them no notice. I endangered her employment by making her have to miss work, with no notice, to handle everything in the days following. I created unnecessary logistical challenges by making her have to move out, with nowhere to put her belongings, and nobody to help her move these things. I burdened her financially with the costs of establishing her new life. I caused her sudden and immense amounts of stress and anxiety that negatively impacted her mental and physical health.
I destroyed years of trust and dismantled a long-term, nested partnership in a split-second impulsive decision, that offered no warning, no opportunity to have any kind of conversation, and no chance to even orient.
I made a big fucking mess. Not just in that moment, but the next day, and seven weeks later when I was triggered in another moment and shifted blame and avoided owing or being accountable for anything, yet again.
In that final moment, on New Year’s Day, of all days, I destroyed all hope for any kind of repair and amicable friendship. I put the final nail in the coffin of our partnership.
This decisions I made throughout the relationship, the day of the breakup, and in the weeks following were the worst decisions I have ever made, in any relationship. I chose to let my continued avoidance overwhelm me, I panicked, and I chose to let my fears, insecurities, shame, self-hatred, patterns, and traumas take the wheel, and drive the bus right off the cliff.
I don’t know the full impact or burdens of everything I did, and I never will. Not because I don’t care, I’m ignorant, or because I’m unwilling to look, but because I severed my access to that truth by ending things the way I did. I can only speculate because some consequences and impacts will never return to me. Some harms will forever remain invisible to me. That does not make these smaller. It does not make these hypothetical. It does not make these less real.
I carry deep remorse every day that I can’t repair and heavy guilt I may never resolve. I may never get to make amends. I can’t take any of it back, it happened, and I wish it never had. The consequences of my decisions are serious, permanent, and deserved, and I accept them completely. Accepting them does not erase the harms done. It means I am not denying them, minimizing them or trying to outrun them. I am facing them head on and permanently changing myself moving forward.
My living amends through demonstrated accountability:
- I am no longer avoiding or repeating my toxic behaviors and patterns or outsourcing responsibility for them—I am working on them everyday and involving professional supports.
- I am no longer blaming people for my fears, insecurities, patterns, decisions, behaviors, internal shame, self-hatred, problems, or traumas. They are mine and only mine, regardless of where and how they developed, who or what caused them, or what they are rooted in.
- I am owning my decisions, demonstrating accountability through correcting my behaviors moving forward, and making amends where I can with the people I have harmed in the past.
- I am being brutally honest with myself about my problems and struggles, and no longer avoiding the toxic shadows that have followed me throughout my life.
- I am no longer hiding any of my problems and struggles until they metastasize, overcome me, and spill all over people who love me.
- I am asking for help from my supports and professionals early and immediately when I am struggling with anything.
- I am no longer making unilateral and inhumane decisions that devastate, destroy, and harm the people who love me.
- I am communicating honestly, openly, and immediately with my connections about my problems and struggles before they build up and eventually overwhelm me.
- I am understanding how all of my actions and decisions land on others, not just how they protect or regulate me.
Partnership and love is not just about my needs, my safety and my comfort. It is about shared compassion, shared communication, shared problem solving, shared impact, shared responsibility, and shared humanity.
I lost an irreplaceable loving partner, and I learned these lessons in an unnecessarily painful way that deeply hurt her.
When this ended, it wasn’t just a breakup.
It was a load-bearing wall coming down on both of us.
HARD.
The opposite of love’s indifference