She was the first woman that I let move in with me. All my friends thought I needed to learn to let people in more. A few months after she moved in, I was offered to travel to the US. She could not come along. At the airport we said goodbye in tears, and she was assuring me she could not survive three weeks without me. I returned after three weeks, and she said: “I fell in love with someone else. I have known her for just 4 days, but I know that she can give me everything that you cannot.”

I was banal and asked about her plans regarding our life together. The next day she still had no answer, so I kicked her out. She immediately went on holiday with her new girlfriend while her furniture stayed with me. Not knowing what to do with my anger, I finally bought this axe at Karstadt to blow off steam and to give her at least a small feeling of loss – which she obviously did not have after our break-up.

In the 14 days of her holiday, every day I axed one piece of her furniture. I kept the remains there, as an expression of my inner condition. The more her room filled with chopped furniture acquiring the look of my soul, the better I felt. Two weeks after she left, she came back for the furniture. It was neatly arranged into small heaps and fragments of wood. She took that trash and left my apartment for good. The axe was promoted to a therapy instrument.


An Exe Axe

We were supposed to be getting married, but you were acting distant and angry. I had temporarily moved away four months before, but I remember telling you that I would never do that if I didn't think our love could sustain the distance. Weekends together became awkward and strained. For our sixth Christmas together, you gave me a Dr. Seuss book and a bag of apples. We broke up a month later, over the phone, our six-year relationship done without much discussion. And then you married my friend. Thirty-one years later I consider it a bullet dodged.

Ten Apples Up On Top

Hi there,

My name's Dylan, I'm a 30 year old Canadian, and I just wanted to get this story off my chest...

Ever since my first love at 17, I was met with dishonesty and disloyalty. The first girl admitted to having a boyfriend. A year later, the second cheated on me with my own brother. The next one was 32 years old and had children and a husband. The one after that cheated on me with her ex-boyfriend.

I took a leave from it. 4 years, without chasing anything remotely close to a relationship. I did not know normal. I had developed crippling anxiety that would weigh me down for years to come.

And so, at 24, I tried again. Met a girl, she showed interest, until we had an argument and she went right back to Tinder. Tried again. The next one admitted to still having nudes on Reddit well into our relationship. All i wanted was someone dedicated to me with no weird strings attached.

I finally went to therapy. Through sweat and tears, I fought the anxiety, which transformed from being post-traumatic to social and general, existing in every aspect of my life. At 25, I met another girl. And i had my first "normal" relationship.

By "normal" I mean that it was an honest one. She loved me, and I loved her, but only as much as the walls I'd built up around my heart would allow. She never broke them down. She wasn't able to see them, and thought I was just emotionally unavailable. Because the part of me that was available was hidden behind those walls.

4 years went by. I spent those years being supportive, honest, and good to her. I helped her when she was in trouble, which was all the time. Towards the end, her family life went to sh*t,. She became distant, unpredictable, and started telling me she was going to stay at her mom's. I believed her. Until one night, after moving into my new house, the ceiling started leaking and I called her to come back and help me. She never answered. I called her mom and she said her daughter had never come over. I got worried sick and reported her missing to the police, stayed up all night praying she was okay. They got in touch with her the next day, and called me to tell me she was fine. I didn't need to know what she'd done. The dishonesty was enough on its own, I broke it off. And i did not shed a single tear. Because I did not love her enough in the first place to put my heart at risk of being broken.

And now, the grand moment. Fast forward 6 months. March 2025. I get deployed to Florida for a few weeks. I tell myself it's time to try again, I try a few dating apps. Just for the interactions, see what it's like to talk to girls on that side of the globe. And the love of my life slid into my Bumble messages.

She was only 21. I was 8 days from being sent home. We start chatting, I tell her I'm going home soon, and she jokes about coming with me. I didn't take her seriously, she was too young and no one would ever commit to moving across the country for someone they just met...or so I thought.

I made it back home. We kept talking, added each other on snapchat, and a few days in, we video called each other. And again that night. And every night after. The more we talked, the more I realized how perfect our momentum was. She liked the way I thought, how I acted, my charm, charisma, I was perfect in her eyes. She was obsessed with me. This isn't a brag, those were her words.

A month in, I took a second to think. I was getting attached. I thought about the grand scheme. The work involved in us planning a life together. The move. All of it. It terrified me, I did not believe we could make the distance work until she was ready. I wanted to commit, but it felt like the effort was too great.

I tried to call it off. She said "you either commit now, or you back off for good. Don't make me fall in love with you any more than this if you're just going to back out". And so I made a choice. I was all in. There was no going back.

3 months in. June 2025. I flew her out to come see me. We spent a week together. The most magical week of my life. Everything was perfect. I was deeply in love. I admitted it. Those walls I held for so long? She knew about them. She broke them down until there was nothing but rubble. I was completely vulnerable and exposed to her. She said she would protect me. She said she would never let my heart hurt again.

I "fake proposed" to her during that week. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought, after all those years thinking I would never love again, I'd finally found the one. The one girl who would earn my love, and keep it until death did us part.

I flew myself out to go see her family in July. Show them I wasn't some raving lunatic, but actual boyfriend material. They liked me, and trusted me to take care of her. And their trust was well placed.

One month later. Late August. The big day finally came. She got into the car with her parents, and they drove all the way up to Quebec to come meet me, stay at my place for a weekend, and hang out before leaving her with me. She was confident. I was her man, she knew it in her very core, she sold her car, quit her job, moved to another country for me. We were going to weather any storm.

She said she wouldn't really miss her parents. Her sister and best friend, sure, but it was worth it to be with me. I believed her. I'd been isolated from everyone before, and I'd made it just fine. I took her under my roof. Fed her, took care of her, got her on my insurance, a credit card, catered to her every need. I promised to take care of her and put my money where my mouth was.

I deployed to England for a month, only two weeks after she arrived. We knew that was coming, but I needed the extra money to guarantee our well-being. I left her with the house, the car, a credit card to buy groceries and anything else she needed. It was a very difficult month, she missed me, she was isolated, and I tried my best to comfort her and keep her feeling safe until I came home. She fell into a deep depression, which continued for a while after I came home.

She started losing parts of herself. I no longer saw the happy, romantic, enamoured girl I'd met. She was a shell of her former self. Every day, she realized she missed something new. Texas Roadhouse, Taco Bell, a walk on the pier, live music, all things she couldn't have in my neck of the woods. I tried to compensate. Take her out shopping, new places, car rides, meet with friends, play pool at the bar, anything that showed I was prioritizing her happiness above everything.

It became financially straining. My cushion money was diminishing, and after a few months I had to cut back on the activities, to ensure we'd keep a roof over our head. I started worrying about money, and it frustrated her that I tried doing things for her but I'd always end up worrying about money at some point or another throughout the night.

Fast forward to the holidays, in December. We drove out 6 hours to see my family. Her dog, Ringo, which I desperately wanted to be OUR dog, drove me mad with his consistently poorly trained behavior. He'd regressed since Florida, pooping inside the house, running away and almost getting hit, constantly adding to my list of headaches. I was patient with him, but the day we drove out to my mom's, my cup ran over and I was extremely angry with him.

The car ride was tough. I tried calming down, but he had built up so much anger in me from his behavior. She was too accepting of it in my eyes, our methods of handling him were very different. We didn't speak for much of the car ride, because i wanted to take the time to cool off.

We get to my mom's house. She was terrified of my mom not liking her, because she'd had bad relationships with in-laws in the past. I'd promised her my mom would love her, simply because she treated me well. But when we got there, I started venting to my brother about the issues with the dog, my mom overheard, and so did she. Unintentionally, I drove a wedge between her and my mom, because my mom sought to defend me and she felt like I was working too hard towards the relationship when she wasn't. The situation got awkward, my mom became mean towards her, and I did everything I could to defend her, because I did not want her to relive another poor relationship with a lover's parents where she wasn't being defended.

We left earlier than predicted. We spent New Years alone, together, which I was more than okay with. The only person I cared to be with was her. Time progressed, and her depression got worse. I enlisted her in French courses, i got her in touch with my friends' girlfriends, and slowly she stopped going to class. She stopped trying to go and hang out with them. She was letting herself become miserable.

Soon, the question started rising in our heads. Should she just go home? She did not want her misery to affect me. I wanted her happiness more than anything. More than my own. So much that I didn't realize how much it would rip me apart to have to send her away. I thought not of my own well-being.

Time was nearing the end. She only had until February to extend her stay, legally, and we had to choose whether or not to start the extension process. And we finally came to the decision. She was going home.

Two weekends later, we got in the car, and I set out for New York, where her parents would pick her up. I was in denial. I wanted to enjoy every last second with her. And I did. She didn't understand why I wasn't grieving. She didn't understand that all I could think of was her happiness, and not the loss of mine. We hadn't broken up, she was just going home, so she could be happy.

And so, we met her parents in New York. We transferred her things over, we hugged one last time, and they took off. She was still the love of my life. We'd talked about when we'd have our children, where we would have them, their names, where we'd live a few years down the road, all of it. Never had I had that conversation. Never had I cared to have it until her.

I had so many souvenirs of her at home. Love notes she'd written in altoid tins. Every room filled with fond memories. And as I got home that night, the denial wore off. My body realized that my other half, the love of my life, had left my home.

A week went by. Every day more painful than the next. My heart had been ripped away from me. She held it in her arms, thousands of miles away. The next saturday, we got on the phone. And I poured my heart out.

I said I was sorry I couldn't keep her here. We'd planned for me to move over to the USA, a couple years down the line. But I have a stable job, and a house, I'd have to uproot my whole life, it takes planning, and a very long time living on a promise that may or may not come true. Every day away from her, until then, was going to be excruciating. Not to mention I was going to be worried sick for her, Florida is not a safe haven, and bad things happen to innocent people.

I had to choose between suffering every day for years, or facing an immense amount of pain now until god knows when. She argued, slightly, she said we weren't breaking up. I begged her to give me a better option. I searched all over for one. But there wasn't one.

We got off the phone that night, after I'd poured my heart out, no longer boyfriend and girlfriend. I told her I wanted to give her closure. Provide her with every single thought my mind could come up with. I wanted her to understand this was an impossible situation for me, and I did not want to let her go. I was forced to. If I hadn't, I would've lost myself, I wouldn't have been the boyfriend she deserved.

She was speechless. She knew how important closure was to me. She knew I'd lived through abandonment before. She knew how extremely important it was for me to understand what was going through her mind. And all she could say was "I love you". And we hung up.

A week went by. All of it started spiraling in my head. The grief became heavier and heavier. My heart filled with words that I desperately wanted to share with her. I loved her beyond anything I'd ever loved. My heart fought, every second, against the impossibility I was faced with.

All I could think of was "How can I accept this? If this is the love of my life, how can I stop fighting for her"? And so I texted her. I told her how much I loved her, and how extremely painful it was for me to face the impossibility of the decision. And all she could say was "It's going to be okay. You have to deal with this. Go get help."

I begged her to open up. To show me the girlfriend who'd written those love notes. To not pretend like we'd fallen out of love. To not pretend she'd abandoned us already. And I was met with an ice cold wall of emotional unavailability.

I begged her to tell me she understood. At the very least, that she understood how much I felt like I owed to her. She was the first person to show me true love, to not play with my heart. She said she understood. And the texts ended there.

I vented to my friends. They told me she'd probably bottled it up and moved on. I said no way. No way she could possibly forget us, who we are, what we mean to each other, and fall into the arms of another. I defended her honor to the very end.

Another week went by. I was struck with a gut-wrenching feeling. A man's intuition. I redownloaded Bumble, the app where we'd first messaged each other. And then I saw it. Her profile had changed, she updated her pictures and her bio. "I see you're still alone this close to Valentine's Day. Let's change that".

My heart sunk. The woman of my dreams. The girl I'd put on a pedestal since day one, because she saw my walls, and promised she would fix me. She knew how badly damaged I was. She promised to heal me, and I believed her. I'd tried backing out at first, she didn't let me. She promised she'd see things through to the end with me. And I committed my heart, wallet, and soul to her.

How could she forget? How could she just move on, after I gave her everything in my power? I showed her more love than any man could ever show her. How could she just forget me? How could she talk to another man, a man who wouldn't give her half the attention, the thought, the care, the humor, the empathy, the interest that I gave?

I messaged her on bumble, to tell her she'd broken my heart. And then I blocked her, which means she won't see it anyways. I'm left dealing with this pain, without her ever knowing what her actions, her inactions, her coldness, her withdrawal, her abandonment did to me. Why hasn't her heart fought this the way mine did?

I've been crying, day in and day out since then. I wake up at night, nauseous, I had to get medication to settle my stomach. I can't focus at work, I might even fail my course. I've been reading up on posts, articles, stories, and I've come to a realization. I'm experiencing abandonment. My nervous system is in shock. I dream of her at night and wake up thinking she is still there. I love her, truly and unconditionally.

And now, I have to make my own peace. I have no closure. I have no answers. She abandoned me. She left me in an empty home, heartbroken and alone. The one woman I thought was going to save me.

I know this was exceedingly long. For those of you who read until the end, thank you, truly. I just want to be seen. I feel like no one understands how much this hurts me. They all expect me to move on. "Accept it", the way she did. But accepting means to stop fighting. And how can you stop fighting for someone you truly, truly love?

My love story

<div>Dear me, This Valentine’s Day, I hope you give yourself the love you deserve... ~ ~ ~ How: write a postcard to your future self and leave it with us. We’ll keep it for a year and send it back to you next Valentine’s Day, stamped with release by Brokenships. Where: Museum of Broken Relationships, at the entrance When: 9-14. Feb (Zagreb) / 14-28. Feb (Chiang Mai) ~ ~ ~ You may write about what hurts, what you hope will change, or what you want to remember. In one year, the message will arrive unchanged, even if everything else has changed. Because not everything meaningful should arrive instantly. Note: you can buy the postcards in the MoBR shops at the entrance of the museum 💌 </div>