The shift

The end of February brought our first major rupture. I don’t remember every detail of what triggered it, but I remember how I felt. I was struggling. I felt insecure, like I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t feel valued or fully seen in the relationship, and instead of recognizing that something in the dynamic itself was contributing to those feelings, I expected my partner to fix them for me. I wanted him to make me feel like I mattered, like I belonged, like I was important to him.

In hindsight, that wasn’t his responsibility—but it was a signal that something wasn’t right.

Rather than having the hard conversations we needed to have, he shut down. Without warning, without discussion, without explanation, he ended the relationship. It blindsided me.

I am deeply loyal by nature. I don’t give up easily, and I had believed he felt the same way. So I fought for him. I tried to ask questions. I tried to talk through what had happened. Looking back now, I know I should have let the relationship go at that point.

One night, during a text conversation about the breakup, he told me he was still at golf and would call me in a few minutes. I waited. When he finally called, he told me he had spent most of the day—on the course and afterward at the bar—talking about me. About how great I was, how much he loved me, how perfect our relationship was, and how he needed to do better and be better for us.

We talked for hours that night. Eventually, we decided to meet at our spot. When we saw each other, it felt as though nothing had changed.

But that night, he said something that should have sent me running.

He told me he needed to be sure he was in love with me. He said his marriage had traumatized him so deeply—what his ex-wife had done and said—that he needed certainty.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand why, but I was crushed. For weeks, he had told me how much he loved me, how I had changed his life, how happy I made him. And suddenly, he wasn’t sure.

I should have walked away then. But I loved him. I wanted to believe him.

So I set a boundary. I told him clearly: I would give him time—but he was not to tell me he loved me, that he was in love with me, or that we were forever unless he was 100% sure. He agreed.

Within a week, he was telling me exactly those things—that he loved me, that he was in love with me, that we were forever.

That was the moment everything changed.

I shifted from being a strong, confident woman to someone focused almost entirely on keeping him happy—on making sure he didn’t fall out of love with me as suddenly as he had before. That moment fundamentally changed how I behaved, how I saw myself, and how I saw him.

That moment altered the entire course of our relationship.

And as painful as that was, it still wasn’t the worst of what he did to me!

Location: Paso Robles, CA 93446, USA

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