I don’t know you, and you don’t me, so I’ll cut to the chase.

You love him. I get that. I loved him too. But I shouldn’t have and I wished someone would have told me. It’s why I’m writing you this letter. To give to you, what I never got—a fair warning.

I don’t want to hurt you, but he will. He’ll shatter you, simply because it’s what he does. He meets someone, then he makes them believe they need him, and then he breaks them.

It’s good at first, as most relationships are. He’s a sweet talker and he has the smile to match it. He calls you beautiful like it’s your name, and he tells you you’re different from any girl he has ever met. He says you make him want to change, and then he convinces you he has.

He’ll dedicate the love songs he hears on the radio, to you. He’ll buy you pretty flowers and he’ll always hold the door. He’ll kiss you on the forehead, and he’ll take you out on dates. He’ll always text you goodnight, and he’ll promise you he’s changed.

But he hasn’t, because after he sends you that goodnight text, he gets bored. And he finds someone else to make his ego feel good.

He’s careful at first. He waits until you’re in bed so he knows you feel safe. Then he does everything he can to make you regret feeling safe, later. I found that out the hard way. Sometimes he meets a girl at a bar, or sometimes he reaches out to a girl from his past, but either way, he’s with someone who isn’t you.

The next day you’ll ask him what he did last night, but it isn’t because you suspect it’s anything bad. It’s because you just genuinely want to know, because you like him, or maybe you even love him. You don’t know yet, but you know you want to know everything about him.

He’ll whisper sweet lies like, “I spent all night missing you.” and, “I couldn’t fall asleep because I just kept thinking about me and you.” But he didn’t, and he wasn’t. He was cheating on you, just like he cheated on me, and the girls before us.

Eventually, you’ll catch on. A friend of a friend will swear she saw him out with another girl. A random photo of him with someone else will pop up on Instagram, and you’ll catch a glance of an inappropriate text on his phone.

He’ll deny it all, and if you love him as much as I did, you’ll believe him.

That’s when he knows he’s broken you, and that’s when he gets over you. He’ll become distant. The goodnight texts will stop, the forehead kisses will become less frequent, and the promises of love will become nonexistent. But he won’t dump you. That’s too easy.

Instead, you’ll question him again, and he’ll make you feel crazy. He’ll actually get angry with you, and expect you to apologize to him. Because how dare you not trust him, and how dare you not believe in what the two of you have. He changed for you, and you let him down, and now you deserve to feel broken.

You see, you thought it was love, but he only charmed you with a sweet smile and even sweeter words. He made you want him, and then he made you need him. But it was never because he needed you. It was because he needed to be needed and one single girl can never make him feel needed enough, and no girl ever will. Not even you.

And I know even after all I have written here, you’re still hoping it’s not true. You’re thinking maybe I’m wrong, and maybe this time it really is different. Maybe you really aren’t like any girl he has ever met before and maybe he has changed for you.

But he hasn’t, I promise, and I know, because as you’re laying in bed right now feeling safe, he’s texting me, his ex girlfriend, and asking if I’m free.