When it’s a breakup you don’t want but need there isn’t hostility. There isn’t some dramatic ending with ugly words thrown and you suddenly hate the person which makes it a little easier.

You know when you mask the pain with anger sometimes it’s easier to move on. But when you aren’t even angry at the person and you still walk away loving them, it’s just this pain of losing someone you really care for.

You’re happy to just know the person. You’re happy to have loved them. And be loved by them. And even with the pain, you find yourself grateful for all of it. You have this standard you refuse to lower because of everything they did, everything they are and everything they made you.

You end on good terms but it’s almost like you’ve lost part of who you are in them.

It’s losing the person you talk throughout the day. It’s waking up and staring at the phone, remembering when it used to be their name you saw on the screen. It’s laying in a bed that now feels too big for one, as you recall reaching for them in the dark. It’s good news you used to share with them. The bad news and they used to be the ones holding you up. Now you gotta do all those things alone. It’s the extra time of the day where it suddenly feels like there’s too much. Because when you share a life with someone it never felt like there was time for yourself but now you feel lonely.

You know it had to end but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

Even though it ended and things might be over they still made you so happy.

Sometimes though it’s not that black and white. And the last thing it is is easy. Relationships end for all sorts of reasons even when you love the shit out of each other. Sometimes love isn’t enough to make it work.

Sometimes you have to grow apart from people you love to see if there’s any hope of growing back together.

Sometimes being with someone doesn’t allow you to grow alone the way you need to.

So you have to let them go. And it’s not because you didn’t love them enough or you weren’t right or good enough. Sometimes you are perfect for each other but there’s that factor of evaluating if you are the person you need to be for that type of relationship.

The thing is when you try and force a relationship when it’s obvious that something is off or there is something alone you each need to work on, there are going to be a million little problems and fights that arise that isn’t addressing the actual issue.

But eventually that truth will reveal itself and it might be ugly. But it will come out.

You’ll be at this crossroad of do we continue to stumble alone walking side by side? Or do we each go our own way in hopes somewhere down the line we find our way back to each other?

And it hurts to let go. But it hurts holding onto something that’s not there anymore.

The thing to remember when the heartbreak of parting ways overwhelms you and you don’t want to let them go, keep in mind some people stay in our hearts and not in our lives and when you’re lucky when you are really lucky you find your way back to each other. Only the second time around you’ll be even better versions of yourself and that relationship will be one of the strongest forces in your life. But first, you have to be strong alone to make that discovery.