what should i do

Throughout our relationship, I repeatedly felt that I was not truly heard.

Very often, when situations came up where I felt hurt, I communicated calmly and respectfully. I never attacked him personally. I clearly said things like:
“I’m not blaming you. I just want to tell you that your actions hurt me, and this was painful for me.”

What I needed was very simple: to have my feelings taken seriously.

However, instead of being heard, a pattern kept repeating. When I expressed my pain, he often reacted in one of these ways:
• he used gaslighting or minimized my feelings,
• he compared my pain to other situations,
• or he apologized, but then added a “but”, shifting the focus back to himself and his emotions.

Even when I explicitly told him that this behavior hurt me deeply and asked him to please just listen and try to understand my feelings, nothing truly changed. I wasn’t asking him to agree with everything or to blame himself — I was asking for emotional accountability and empathy.

This didn’t only happen in serious situations. It also happened with jokes or boundaries. When I asked him not to say or do certain things because they hurt me, it was often taken as if I was against him, not against the problem. I explained many times that I was not attacking him — I wanted to solve the issue together without hurting either of us. Still, it felt like my words were ignored.

Over time, this became extremely painful. I gave him chances. I cried in front of him. I told him clearly how much this was hurting me. I even gave him “last chances,” despite how exhausted and broken I felt. The only moments when he seemed to truly understand my pain were when I mentioned breaking up. After that, something would change — but only for a few days. Then everything returned to the same pattern.

There was also a lack of basic care. For example, when I was sick, there was no concern or checking in — only after I explicitly asked did he start doing it. This made me feel invisible and unimportant.

After a month of giving him another chance, I realized nothing was truly changing. I loved him deeply, and my attachment to him was very strong, but I had to ask myself:
If something hurts me this much, why should I continue to endure it?

Eventually, I told him honestly that this was leading to a breakup because I felt consistently hurt and unheard. He cried, apologized, and promised it would be different. I wanted to believe him — but the same behavior continued. My feelings were still not considered, and once again I felt emotionally abandoned. That’s when I said I couldn’t continue like this anymore.

After the breakup, we stayed in contact. I agreed to talk and call, even though almost every conversation ended with me crying. He often used phrases like “You are special to me,” “You are the only one,” “I wanted a future with you,” “I’ve never loved anyone like this.”
These words hurt deeply, because they raised the question:
If I am so special, why was I treated this way?

Even then, the focus was rarely on my pain. He expressed guilt and self-blame, but not real care for my emotional state. There was no space where he said:
“I see that you are hurting. Let’s do what makes this easier for you.”

I clearly told him that meeting in person was too painful for me at that time. I said I was okay with texting and calling, but face-to-face meetings were emotionally overwhelming. Instead of respecting that, he reacted impulsively and said things like:
“You just don’t want to give me another chance.”

This completely invalidated my feelings. I broke down. I was crying uncontrollably, lying on the floor, struggling to breathe. Only after I sent a seven-minute voice message explaining how unacceptable this behavior was — explaining that I had been unheard for months and that this dynamic was destroying me — did he finally write a long message acknowledging his mistakes for the first time in six months.

While I appreciated that message, it was also incredibly painful. It felt devastating that my pain was only taken seriously after I reached such a breaking point. When I told him this, he answered with:
“What could I do? I was emotional. I was impulsive.”

That response hurt again, because it shifted responsibility away instead of fully taking it.

Now I’m in a deep dilemma. I still love him. I miss him. I cry. He showed love in many ways, but he consistently failed to treat my feelings with care and respect. He was afraid of losing me as a person, but he was never afraid of hurting me — even when he saw the damage it caused.

And that is the core of the problem.

I was not asking for perfection. I was asking to be heard, respected, and emotionally safe. I cannot stay in a relationship where my pain is repeatedly minimized, even if the love is real…

Last updated on:2026-01-08T23:20:23+05:30