Looking back now, I think the hardest part was not the breakup itself.

It was the fact she never fully disappeared.

If she had walked away cleanly, blocked me once, and stayed gone, maybe my brain would eventually have accepted it.

But that is not what happened.

Instead, I lived in this strange in between world where I was good enough to spend time with, good enough to sleep beside, good enough to go on holiday with, but never secure enough to feel emotionally safe.

One minute I was blocked.

The next I was lying next to her in bed wondering if things were finally getting better.

Then days later it would all change again.

No explanation.

No real conversation.

Just distance.

I became addicted to trying to get back to the “good version” of us.

The version where she was warm.

Present.

Affectionate.

The version that made me believe the relationship still had hope.

What I did not realise at the time was that I was surviving on emotional breadcrumbs.

Tiny moments of closeness became enough to keep me hanging on because I was constantly scared of losing them again.

That changes you psychologically.

You stop asking yourself:

“Is this relationship healthy?”

And start asking:

“How do I stop this person leaving me again?”

That shift is dangerous.

Because once your mind moves into survival mode, you stop protecting yourself.

I accepted behaviour I would once have walked away from.

I normalised confusion.

I normalised inconsistency.

I normalised emotional instability.

And because there were still moments of love mixed into it all, I kept convincing myself things were fixable.

People often think toxic relationships are constant arguments and chaos.

Sometimes they are much quieter than that.

Sometimes the damage comes from uncertainty.

From never fully knowing whether you are loved or tolerated.

Wanted or endured.

Safe or replaceable.

I lost years trying to understand someone who probably did not fully understand themselves.

Meanwhile my own mental health was collapsing in front of me.

The anxiety became unbearable.

My self worth disappeared.

I stopped recognising myself.

And the worst part is this:

I still loved her while it was destroying me.

That is what makes these situations so difficult to explain to people who have never experienced them.

Because from the outside people ask:

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

But when someone keeps giving you just enough connection to hold onto hope, leaving feels like tearing yourself away from the possibility that the person you fell in love with might come back permanently.

Eventually though, I had to face reality.

I was trying to build emotional security with someone who kept removing it.

That realisation broke me.

But in a strange way, it also saved me.

Because once I stopped trying to fix the relationship, I finally started fixing myself.

That journey became the foundation for so much of my writing.

A Fine Line Between Love and Hate was born from the emotional confusion of loving someone who could feel so close one moment and so distant the next.

They Became The Chapter. You Became The Author came from learning that healing sometimes begins the moment you stop chasing answers from the person who hurt you.

And The Narcassist Handbook explores many of the emotional patterns that leave people trapped in cycles of confusion, self doubt, and emotional dependency.

I spent two years in therapy trying to understand what happened to me.

What I know now is this:

Love should never leave you constantly frightened of abandonment while simultaneously clinging to moments of affection just to survive emotionally.

That is not peace.

That is emotional exhaustion disguised as hope.