I Let My Anxiety Ruin My Relationship

A year ago, I was the happiest girl on this planet. I was dating a cute boy that I loved, and it was our two-month anniversary. Everything was new and exciting, and I was ecstatic.

I had always had deep-seated anxiety issues, always rushing around, and worrying, and being negative, but this boy took it all away. His sweet personality mixed with his gorgeous blue eyes were enough to make me smile for hours on end. And they did. They really did.

But then the winter came, and things got darker. My nights got longer and the more attached I became, the more worried I was. I had always told him, from the beginning, that one day he’d get sick of me. He told me a million times that he would always be there for me, and that he loved me. And that all the people who had left before had made mistakes. He always called me beautiful then.

Somewhere around the one year mark, things got a little hazy. We got comfortable being together, and the little sweet things went away. With that went the reassurance I was constantly hearing.
Over that year, I grew up a lot. As a person, I became a whole lot more independent and strong because of some issues I had to face. This newfound maturity and experience didn’t make sense to him. The things I thought were important, he thought were stupid, and vice versa.

His undamaged past began to clash with my messy, hurtful one, and the pain I was feeling didn’t make sense to him anymore. My efforts to make him say the words “I want to stay” came through in threats of ending the relationship, because I figured that if he cared enough, he would fight for me. But I never actually wanted him to go.

Sometimes, he would say things that I would take as something entirely different. When he asked me if I was okay, I said yes, I’m fine, he would go to sleep. And then I’d stay up for hours alone, resenting him for not knowing.

I expected him to read my mind.

And he expected me not to test him.

But the truth is I don’t really think I’ll ever be able to trust anyone anymore. I cried to him countless times because I was scared he was going to leave, and when he held me and told me it was okay, I felt better. Except when he left for college he wasn’t there to hold me. He felt like he never gave me a reason to doubt him, and it wasn’t fair. So he just got angry.

The angrier he got, the more defensive I became. The fighting was almost constant, and neither of us were happy. But we stayed because we loved each other.

But then one day, about a week after he moved into college, he came to me and told me he didn’t think it was “a healthy relationship” anymore. He told me that he thinks I can find someone who will support me, but that he didn’t want to lead me into thinking he’s someone I can count on.
And that broke my heart.

He was the one who took down my guard and made me believe in love, and then he took it all away again. So here I am, on what would’ve been our 14 month anniversary. Trying to make sense of it all.

Wondering how someone who loved me for almost 14 months decided to quit on me one day. Someone whose love was so unconditional. Or so he told me.