I sobbed for my whole 30 minute walk into work yesterday morning. As I approached my building, I wondered what could possibly need to be said. I heard a voice.

Don’t get esoteric with it. You know what happened. Write the truth.

The truth is…

This group of people met each other in a shared time of need. We took a long form improv 101 class, beginning under a treacherous January snowstorm, and clung to each other. We kept going into the next level of classes, and then the theater closed.

The whole community was sent into disarray. Out of 11 people in the core group, 9 formed a team. Those two who were excluded were left out intentionally. I raised the issue; the decision stood.

We practiced in the basement of a local church, the same venue where community jams began picking up. The two left out of the group became regulars, always trying their best to be friendly to the group, despite the betrayal.

As time went on, I started seeing someone in the group. He was keen on keeping it a secret; I was not.

Suddenly, I found out my landlord was selling my house. I told everybody at a church jam. By then, they all knew we were seeing each other. They’d all been to his house - there was an unspoken understanding that my intent was to move in with him.

What they could not see, though, were the hours of conversations I initiated and walked him through. I was living on savings at the time - I had around $20k. I told him that he did not need to do this for me. I could get a place on that savings, but I’d have to hustle and wouldn’t have time for the relationship. We spoke at length about the realities of it, what I would pay for (half the utilities - he didn’t want me paying for a mortgage that wasn’t mine), how it could be temporary, and why it felt like a call we were pulled to make, despite it being a big swing on paper. I gave him nearly 6 weeks of the 2 months of lead-time I had, offering an abundance of patience and faith. All the while, the group looked at me with concern and pity and never tried to understand why that was the choice I wanted to make.

Admittedly, I was worried I was being manipulative. I was raised in an environment where any communication of need was seen as manipulation. That pattern combined with the held-breath energy from the group made me question myself. I voiced this concern to him, and he said he did not feel manipulated.

The move-in happened. We were both excited. I cleared out my three floor house by myself, in a weekend, and made probably 15 runs in my SUV. I think he took a carload. But mostly, I did it on my own in order to ease his nerves. Later on, he told me, “It was probably a lot harder on you than it was on me. It was shockingly smooth for me.” I thought, “Yeah. I worked hard for you to feel that way.”

Things were strange in the first several months. We still practiced with the group every week. Their judgment never eased. Every time we stepped into the space, I felt defense in my body. I held strong. We’d get in the car to go home, and I’d usually panic in the sudden release of pressure. He’d say, “Wow, what lovely folks!” This went on for months.

There were times I brought the dissonance up to him, saying, “These people are not being lovely to me.” He’d say he didn’t understand or hadn’t noticed. I’d carefully explain my experience to him, hoping he’d start to see. Most of these conversations ended with him saying, “I don’t understand how I’ve failed you!” I’d regroup and try again next time.

Through the first four or five months, I was still living on my savings. We scarcely talked about money. It felt like a conversation he ought to initiate.

I had frequent debates with myself about the asymmetrical emotional labor of the situation and knew I had to leave opportunities for him to take some ownership, too. In past relationships, I’ve been prone to over-managing and wanted to do this differently, despite being willing to take on more than my share because of his support with housing.

The one-way communication was something I communicated about often. I was deeply frustrated that, to him, partnership did not mean developing a depth of understanding. During these times, I wondered if I was being impatient. An excerpt from roughly two months after the move-in reads, “i’m angry with you and it feels counterproductive to be angry and not say anything, but when i do say things about myself, you don’t retain them.”

I knew, then, pretty early on that I was stuck in some detrimental cycle. But who would have been willing to see that with me? The people calling themselves my friends appeared more adversarial than friendly. Their energy made me ashamed for pursuing him in the first place. I felt compelled to stand in the faith of my decision, against them.

As I interviewed and eventually got a job, things changed in the relationship dynamic. The morning of my final interview, feeling hugely angry, unheard, and unappreciated, I told him, “If I get this job, I need to move out.” He blinked quickly, stuttered, and said nothing. Some soft and confused voice inside me whispered, “Okay… so he doesn’t want to lose me?”

The job had a residency requirement that his home didn’t satisfy, so I had to get an apartment. He looked terrified when I said that, clearly not wanting me to leave, and I said I’d get something small and maybe spend some time there. That’s almost what happened.

I rented an extremely overpriced studio. I’d drive in and park there and then walk into work. Sometimes, before going home, I’d go upstairs and just be by myself. I’d roll around on the floor, spending time with my body, doing somatic work that I felt embarrassed to do around him. I took an incense burner there. But I never really settled into the space. The overall lack of conversation about it - his complete avoidance of its existence - filled me with a sense of shame about being there.

Also at this time, I was working through a ton of trauma responses in my body. One was a persistent demand to FLEE. RUN. LEAVE. I understood this to be a body reacting to something from the past, and I tried to exposure-therapy my way through it. I didn’t allow myself to leave, except in brief moments of taking my car around the corner to scream at the top of my lungs, and one night where I was so angry at him, I went to Target, bought a shower curtain and hand soap, and took them to the apartment. Eventually, the flight became a persistent background frequency, and my reactivity stopped.

Things with the improv group never improved. A year and two days ago, I drafted a message about withdrawing that I didn’t send. It included a few telling phrases, “my reasons are … varied … but it is a combination of consistently feeling like i give more to the group than i receive, values differences on the scope of the group, strong opinions about our trajectory, and, truthfully, not feeling like i am actually friends with most people here.” I continued with that group for 8 more months.

Spring into summer was an alright time for me. Despite the amount of energy I was pouring into holding my ground in the ecosystem and advocating for myself in my relationship, I was also tucking energy away for myself. I’d consistently been writing poetry, journaling, and playing instruments - guitar and teaching myself piano. I submitted to some contests, was published in a local poetry anthology, and read in the poetry section of a local music festival. In all these places, I was received well! It was refreshing, but I was hesitant to trust that reception.

These extensions marked some destabilization in the relationship. I’d stopped trying to get him to understand me - something I haven’t mentioned yet is that, early on, we’d have multi-hour conversations where I tried to excavate the space in between us. I didn’t understand what drew me to him so strongly, and I wanted to learn. He was reluctant, but he would sit there with me. I’ve been through that reluctance within myself, so I thought little of how difficult the whole process felt. By this time (roughly 7-8 months into living together, a year into the relationship), those talks had fallen away. A thick, heavy air of acceptance and defeat hung over me. I could not understand what I was doing wrong.

Never one to back down, I started reconnecting with old friends, exploring some spiritual community, and, of course, continued my creations privately.

Much like the group never asked about me, my partner never asked about my work.

Improv practices continued. Somewhere around this time - it was warm enough to sit outside, but I don’t remember the exact date - there was an incident. We were working with a new coach. There was this scene where me and a friend played kids. The main joke of the scene was, “We have terrible parents!” And the main thing in improv scenes is, “Make it worse!” I hated this. The pressure in the room, both the usual defenses and the being watched by someone I didn’t know well, had me on edge. This scene was triggering for me. The team brought it back twice. At the end of rehearsal, the new coach thought we’d done great, but the rest of the room could tell something heavy had happened. I chose not to react in front of them.

The car ride home was like getting a whole body tattoo from the inside out. The second we pulled in the driveway, I demanded to be let out of the car. I ran to the back yard. My partner parked the car in the garage and came up through the house while I had a panic attack. In the moments alone, I recorded a voice memo to the group, documenting my distress and how hurt I felt by them failing to take care of me. When my partner finally showed up, he sat with me while I calmed myself down. I wrote some companion text to go with the voice message, saying, “I’m doing better now, but this is where I was when I got home. This is vulnerable to share but I’m trusting you all.”

I got an outpouring of love and support. Plenty of “We want you to feel safe and comfortable!” messages. I don’t recall any followup on that.

In June, I made a somewhat spontaneous decision to break the lease on my apartment. Mental math said, “Take a loss now so that, by the time the lease ends, you’ll have three times that in savings.” It was abrupt. There is a note in my archives about an emotional “eruption” of mine. The note identifies a strange pattern: outburst, emotional rupture from him, conversation initiated by me, and then sex. The rest of the note mechanically sorts through what had and hadn’t worked in that conversation and how we got from my abject distress to… physicality. It doesn’t come to a grounded conclusion. It ends with me giving myself reassurance that we must be better at repair and “in a much better place than I even knew.”

This brings me to talking about the sex explicitly. One of the earliest things I reclaimed in my healing from sexual trauma was my ability to say, “Stop.” I earned this voice back in my early twenties, with a compassionate and patient long term partner. It was one of the earliest things to leave in the relationship I am detailing here.

Much later on, in the final months of the relationship, he told me, “Every time you got triggered, my window of options got smaller.” That exemplifies precisely why I couldn’t say stop anymore. My reaction became a moral weight on him, and so, every time I allowed him near my body, I’d be caught balancing my desperate need for reassurance in the connection and the truth that displaying my real reactions caused him to retreat, full stop. If I reacted, then, I’d be stuck managing his emotions over my own, which meant not reacting was the only way to access connection with him.

That is the same pattern that caused the trauma.

I communicated this, too. He continued to do what he did to me.

Late summer into early fall were miserable. In relinquishing the apartment, I’d set a subconscious timeline with myself; I had internally agreed to stay until spring (when the lease would have ended). In that acceptance, I’d fully fallen into the pattern of the wound. I was endorsing him and the relationship publicly while privately marinating in lonely agony. The pressure of the dissonance was becoming too much.

There is a note from September, written after spending time with his family, that says, “Why does everyone except [him] think we’re meant to be ? I don’t think I can do this. How is it possible the he can look at [his family member’s partner] and think [sympathetic, understanding sentiments] - but he can’t do that for me? ??????????????? what????????????? like. what is that???????”

This is the interior dialogue of a woman, gaslit. I was fighting for my sanity in the margins of my notes app.

During this time, there is a grim kind of half-clarity running through everything. Another note from later in September says, “I deserve better than to never be sought after, never appreciated by the man whose home i live in. He does certain things, sure. He cleaned the sheets yesterday at my indirect request. Maybe i am being impatient. Maybe im wasting my life for a man who is too baked in his fears to ever become who I need.”

October brought something different still. I went on a work trip - a few days away for a conference. Night one, I got free drinks. I met a woman. We went on a walk, and I held her hand. It was the first time in centuries, it felt like, that I could feel the presence of myself. I kept this information very close to my heart, unsure if it was safe to tell him. When I got home, I hadn’t quite processed what happened. I told him about it, in minimal detail, and then, a few weeks later, told him about the emotional depth of the felt experience.

I felt, even then, that this was a prime opportunity to take this as information. I had not cheated - I hadn’t even seen this woman again after the first night. The important thing, to me, was that I felt more alive with a stranger than I’d felt in a year and a half of this connection. As his pattern goes, my truth was emotionally distressing.

He waited to process this until we were on the other side of the country, scheduled to go to a wedding together. He erupted, deciding I had been manipulative by withholding information about the affair. He insisted he needed to contemplate it alone.

For some reason, we both agreed that we did not want to end the relationship at that time. I offered to fly home, so that’s what I did. Before I left, we spoke about what returning home meant. I asked to move into a room down the hallway, and he said he did not want that, fearing that distance would be the first step towards an eventual crumbling.

When I flew home, I saw someone from the improv group. We’d stopped practices around August because we took a class together at a new improv spot. We had sporadically picked up since then but hadn’t seen each other outside of that, really.

This person agreed that the hand-hold was not a huge problem. She even laughed at one point, saying, “Oh! I thought something was really wrong, I’m glad it’s not that!” Her and I spoke about how intertwined me and him were, and we agreed it’d be a good idea to schedule time to be apart, to work on separate projects, etc. This is an idea I took to him when he returned. He agreed with me. We never acted on it.

One good thing was birthed in the aftermath of the hand-hold, though, which was weekly check in conversations. This was a HUGE turning point for me. It was the first time I felt my style of connection in the entire duration of the relationship. Honestly, the first six weeks of these went really well. I remember on the sixth one, my only thing was, “I have nothing to bring this week, which feels kind of suspicious to me.”

In November, we were asked to make a short video for a friend. I’d been begging him to do a creative project with me since the beginning of the relationship, and he spearheaded the opportunity. I made the audio, he made the video. We worked in productive tension. We enlisted some people from the improv group and filmed with his family over Thanksgiving. I’m still pleased with the final product. This felt like proof that we could genuinely build something together.

December brought challenges for me - my father discarded a bunch of belongings from my childhood bedroom, leaving them at his mother’s house for me to fetch over Christmas. It was triggering and undignified. My ex helped me get the things. We had a huge conversation beforehand where I said, “If you leave me during this process, I will kill myself.” And… genuinely, it wasn’t a threat, it was an assessment of the magnitude of the situation. Abandonment at peak trauma response would have annihilated me.

Around this time, I suddenly withdrew from the improv group chat. The weight of confronting lifelong trauma, maintaining the relationship, and holding the defenses was simply too much.

We survived Christmas. I was able to store the things at a local nonprofit, as there was no room for me in the house - a thing I, hilariously, forgot to mention.

Following my abrupt move out of a 3 bedroom house into his 4 bedroom house, my stuff landed in a combination of closets, a 10x10 plot in the basement, the moldy shed, and the smallest room in the house. My whole house of belongings were condensed into 200 square feet for a year. It was only after six to eight months of advocacy that I was able to move to a larger room. I was never allowed space on the main, shared floor of the house, except a single shelf on a bookcase and a small art cart. I never decorated or settled into any of the rooms he gave me because they felt like enclosures.

When we rearranged the upstairs, and he saw my things spread out in the larger room, he said, “Wow you were really crammed in there!”

I certainly was.

So, then, new things show up, and I have nowhere to put them. I store them at this nonprofit, agreeing to visit with him and process through them systematically. He came with me twice, sat there anxiously the whole time (his words), and then stopped coming without saying anything to me. These were the final weeks of the relationship.

In the last week, on Saturday, I went to a party with some new friends. I had a phenomenal conversation with a friend who said, “We don’t talk a lot, but, when we do, I always feel good about our human connection.” It was a breath of fresh air. It made me feel like I could connect, which I had seriously doubted, given the general state of my social sphere.

That night, I wanted to share this joy with my partner so desperately, but it was guarded. He was frustrated that I wouldn’t tell him what happened. When I finally did, he said, “Aw, [friend], what a gem.” Nothing about how meaningful that must have been for me.

In the same conversation, we agreed that it would be sad to end the relationship having never seen it actually flowing or working well. I brought up how I need him to be affected by me. He said, “I know this sounds bad, but the only reason I’ve survived [the relationship] this long is because I don’t get moved by your emotions.”

We decided that in our weekly check in on Thursday, we’d pick out a couple’s therapist.

I’d started seeing a therapist of my own after getting rid of the apartment, and he was routinely frustrated with my partner’s behavior. He did not like that I had no room in the house. I remember feeling… pity? or sympathy? in my relationship with my therapist through this time. Like, “Dude, I know. But I don’t think you understand how determined this man is to not move or grow towards me.” I never said that, of course, just sort of pursed my lips and shook my head in recognition. The therapist pushed me, firmly and tenderly, to get some space on the shared floor. The symbol of this had long been my couch. I wanted my nice couch moved to a place that wasn’t hidden away.

I demanded it. We did it on Monday. I was the happiest I’d ever been. I sat on the couch, looked at my cat, and said, “We’re staying!!!!!” It was the first time I ever felt stable, in 16 months of living with him.

After moving the couch, he’d gone upstairs to the bathroom. I sat there, sure he’d come downstairs, see how happy I was, and feel some resolution and forward progress.

He came down the stairs and, in a falsely high-pitched voice, he said, “There she is.” He rounded the corner into the kitchen without looking at me.

I wrote a poem called “The Final Act.”

The next morning, I was inconsolable. The realization that I could not experience joy in my own home, after all of that time, broke me in half. I wept and said, “I’ve never felt safe in this house.” He said, “Why do you stay?!” I said some pretty words, and he shook his head, then got up, saying, “I have to think. About who I am.”

I asked him to sleep in the guest room until our chat on Thursday.

Things were stormy the next few days. He behaved as usual, pleasantries and pretending the tension wasn’t there, and I mirrored.

Thursday night, driving home from work, I asked if he needed groceries. He was scheduled for a ski trip Saturday through Wednesday. He said, “I was thinking of making lasagna so you can have some leftovers over the weekend.” He made the lasagna, and he started drinking. Four manhattans in, we started our talk. I told him I didn’t love how drunk he was, he slurred, “That’s fine.”

The breakup was traumatic. Sudden. Loud. Violent. He kept telling me I’m a good person, hoping I’d say it back. I did not. I played a song I’d written back in November and only ever sang when he wasn’t home.

There was no discussion of couples therapy.

I hardly slept that night.

He snored in the guest room while I laid there in agony. The usual dynamic.

There was a reunion with the improv class (more people than the group) scheduled the next night. I’d planned it, so I went and told him not to go. I broke the news. People reacted with softness and some surprise. A few folks made plans to check in with me while he was gone.

When I returned home that night, I asked him to take the ski trip to reconsider. I was sad that we’d walked right up to the doorway of getting the help we needed; I was sadder to see him not take the opportunity. And, truthfully, I was bitter. In my mind, I’d worked for almost two years on getting close enough to him that he might see his wounds and the impact of them. To give up now felt like a shameful tragedy - I did not want to see him hurt like that. He said he’d think about it.

The ski trip came. The check in plans happened. One person told me they always thought he was controlling. Then, they added, “We’d all agree that you’re our friend, and he’s in the friend group.” I understood. My safety is optional to these friends.

I started collecting my things.

He returned, seemingly disgusted that I still cared about him.

We had a conversation where I finally told him he’d exploited me. I told him he did fail. I told him he could become a good person, but he’d need to digest and be accountable for the damage, which requires walking the very same path he was avoiding the whole relationship.

Two weeks from the breakup, I was moved out.

Immediately, my cat wasn’t jumpy anymore. I pulled some oracle cards the third or fourth night in my new home: Boredom, Stability. I felt as if I’d won some prize on a reality show but had to wait until it aired to celebrate publicly.

All of the energy that had gone to holding the boundaries, fighting to keep my mind clear and grounded, and then to moving abruptly was suddenly still. It could be redirected to my creative projects. I went to events and started expanding in every direction that called to me, mindful not to overburden myself and burn out.

I was busy - alive busy.

A few weeks into my new life, I desperately needed a rest day. I had a whole day clear on the schedule. Then, a friend who helped me move texted me that the improv group was meeting to practice ahead of a show that week. I caught on fire with injustice. I thought, “Hold on. He’s benefitting from a space I helped build - passively succeeding on the back of my labor. It’s the same thing he just did to me for two years.”

I texted a different person in the group. They said, “It’s going to be hard to see him benefit from your work. I’ll raise the issue with the group.”

For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to react. I texted each person in the group, individually.

In these conversations, I advocated for myself. I shared how deeply he’d hurt me, explained that I’d left the group because of his suffocating patterns, and pointed out how continuing to give him that space was perpetuating the harm he’d caused. I asked that my community show up to hold him accountable for the things he did. I said, many times that day, I was not asking for exile, but for pause and assessment before they made an unknowing choice to continue the hurt.

The show was cancelled. I heard it was blamed on a lack of practice. I heard my ex sent a long message full of fluffy words and an offer to explain his side if people reached towards him.

In that moment, I was depleted but victorious. I’d spent my whole rest day fighting the same fight, but I’d won this time.

Of course, this success was unsustained. As is the pattern of this group, they acknowledged the truth when presented with my arguments, and then, when it was time to uphold those values on their own, stayed limp.

They had continued on with classes at the new improv establishment - I had not, because of the suffocation.

Their level 2 class formed a bond. They are hanging out, nurturing an ecosystem, with him included.

Two people attempted to get me to form a team with some folks from the new group. Not 10 minutes into the first meeting, my ex’s name was said, and it sent me into fight or flight. My allies argued that I should… hold my ground. As if that’s ever helped me in this ecosystem.

I withdrew from the group.

And so there you have it.

I’ve tried to stay focused on retaining my clarity in this piece.

It seems to me, looking back, I knew what I was seeing and experiencing this whole time.

These people saw me, heard me, felt the presence of my truth, and decided to pursue social comfort instead. They called themselves my friends. He called himself my partner. They all said they loved me.

But love is not control.

Love is integrity. Love is aligned action.

The only love in this story Is from me to myself.

That is the truth, as of this moment in time.

Signed, dated, and sealed, From the pink velvet couch, in my own home.

Friday, April 3rd, 2026, 10:48 pm.