How You Know It’s Time To Give Up On Him

John Goodridge
John Goodridge

I didn’t want to leave this relationship without a fight. But the tricky thing about relationships is that they don’t work out if the other person isn’t willing to fight for it too. And he wasn’t willing to fight for me…for us.

He gave up on us.

All of the nights we spent together, lying in each other’s arms exchanging words of love and passion are ended. The long car rides spent getting lost in attempts to find a restaurant, where we held hands and kissed during red lights are over now. The love letters, Christmas cards and anniversary poems are useless. Hearing him say, “I love you” is now in the past. We do not exist in the present or future. I must accept that you are my history now.

How do you know when it’s time to let go of all of those beautiful moments and stop fighting to make them relevant again? In reality I should have known to let go the second he told me that he couldn’t picture a future with me. But as a girl, caught up in the romance of my first love, I was not willing to move on yet.

Stop fighting the second you feel like you can stand on your own two feet. Stop fighting the moment you get excited about being single and focusing on yourself for once. Stop fighting the instant you feel a smile creep up to your lips after you’ve been through hell and back from a broken heart.

In today’s society, “giving up” is affiliated with very negative feelings. People associate giving up with being a quitter and not being able to push through something challenging in order to succeed. But when you’re going through a break up, giving up is a necessary concept. Giving up doesn’t insinuate that you didn’t do everything in your power to make it work while you were in the relationship. Giving up after a break up implies strength. It means that you were independent enough to not want to go crawling back to them. It means that you are not going to be that desperate person, curled up in the fetal position, calling them every day to beg for their love.

Nothing anyone ever tells you when you’re suffering from a broken heart can help. In truth, your friends’ and family’s words of advice are probably very positive and helpful, but you’re just not willing to listen to them when you’re in that delusional and confused state of mind. You feel incredibly alone and helpless and like nobody is going to say the right thing unless they encourage you to keep fighting for your relationship.

Well I’m here to give you a really hard piece of advice to hear when you’re heart is shattered into a million tiny pieces: Please stop fighting for your relationship. If someone is unable to see what makes you special, beautiful and worth pursuing a future with, don’t waste your time trying to jump back into that relationship. They’re not worth it. I know it’s extremely difficult to be told that you need to move on, especially when you’re still so in love with the person, but you will realize eventually that you’re better off without someone who doesn’t look at you like you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

My ex-boyfriend gave up on us. He took my heart, crushed it and left me as a broken piece of glass shattered on the floor. I had huge epiphany the moment I realized that I’m worth so much more than desperately trying to fight for someone who didn’t think I was amazing. I have so many friends and people in my life who think that I am wonderful and think that I am worth so much more than what I was doing to myself trying to fight for him. I’m starting to believe them.

I hope you can believe the people in your life that tell you how great you are. Those are the people who are truly worth all of your time and energy. It’s OK to break down and cry sometimes, we all do it. It’s fine to have those weak moments. But at the end of the day think about the people who believe that you hung the moon.

There is someone out there for you who will be everything that you need and everything that you never knew you wanted in a partner. Someone will not only see a future with you, but also look forward to it every single day. When someone who you have been in a relationship with isn’t willing to fight for what you had, don’t keep trying to make it work. Anyone who is not willing to fight for you, is not worth fighting for. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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