This Is How You’ll Survive After An Almost Relationship

It’s starts off like this:

You’re both lonely when you meet. Grieving over the loss of your first love, still.

He is finally attracted to someone other than her and is extremely grateful for your beauty. You are the exact opposite of her. And he is the exact same as your first love, only better.

You meet through friends, wondering how you had never met before. The conversation starts out light, then turns intimate. Both of you are telling secrets you wish you could say out loud, but instead are texting. None of you are truly listening to the other, just thinking of what to say next. After a week or two of ‘talking’ you decide to meet in person. He brings you flowers, and you feel so ugly without all the filters Instagram so graciously supplied. He runs his fingers through your hair, admiring how it is the exact opposite of his first love’s. And you stare into his eyes, thinking about how much they look like your first love.

So when you both close your eyes, and lean in for the first kiss, it feels amazing, because neither of you is with the other.

It continues like this for a few months, longer than it should. It has gotten to the point where your mother asks when she gets to meet him, and if he’s even real. His parents don’t care, as long as he’s not crying about her anymore.

And then, it clicks. You realize he is nothing like your first love, and you are everything like his. It hurts more than you can imagine, like you have both been lied to. You both feel a sesne of betrayal, but neither of you will let go.

That’s when the games begin. The constant battle of trying to make the other jealous, the constant battle of who will take longer to reply, or who will say hi first.

Eventually it ends, and you are both so happy, because the confusion, and anger is no longer there. It’s over.

But then he gets a new girlfriend, and he calls her his girlfriend, a label you never had the privilege of having. And for some reason it hurts, and there is anger, so much anger. Then you’ll spend hours studying this new girl, in the quiet of the night. Sometimes he will check on you, but after a few weeks, you are out of his mind. His new girlfriend really is different. There are no games, no first love sad stories, no late night secrets, and that’s just the way he likes it. He has too many unpredictable women in his life, and he’s grown paranoid.

Months will pass and you will continue to be mad, maybe even spread a few rumors about him and his ‘small’ friend. When the truth is, you never really saw it, and you’re not mad at him, you’re mad at yourself. For letting it go this far, for thinking you could replace your first love, and for letting yourself get hurt again.

Almost a year passes, and he’s engaged to her. Your career is booming so you have nothing to be envious of. Yet in the depths of the night, the heartache you thought you moved past, will slither its way back into your sheets and into your chest. And it will hurt, but you will smile, because being mindful of your pain is better than not feeling any.