Disclaimer: I wrote this article in February of 2024, only to break no-contact and text my ex quite literally two months after finishing this article. While it’s so embarrassing to admit this, I feel like this just goes to show how addicting and inescapable this toxic cycle was. This article has been sitting in my drafts, untouched, for months, but now that it has been months since I’ve spoken to my ex, I feel like it’s time that I finally re-edit and publish this article.
The title says it all, but it’s a little different from what you would expect. My ex-boyfriend and I broke up in October of 2022 after a six-month long toxic relationship, but I didn’t actually cut him off until this past summer. Although we stayed in each others lives for about a year and a half, three times as long as we actually dated, we never actually got back together, or even really thought about it.
Our situation was genuinely so complicated, and I think the best way to describe it would be to say that we were friends with benefits, with extra emphasis on the word friends. To be honest, my ex was my best friend, and even though I hated him at times and absolutely HATED (!!!) how he treated me, it was so hard to cut him off due to the severe attachment and undeniable trauma bond that we both suffered from.
I’ll be honest, we tried and failed at no contact at least 30 times. I honestly think the longest we ever went without talking, besides the two month gap between writing this article and breaking no contact, was a whopping three weeks after he cut me off for another girl, only for her to end things with him because he talked about me too much (yes, I wish I was joking).
Having this man stay in my life for such a long time truly changed me in every single way possible, and I’ll never be the same person that I was before I met him, which makes me sad to think about at times. Refusing to let my ex-boyfriend go immediately after we broke-up is honestly probably my biggest regret in life if I’m being honest. I’ve learned so many lessons from that man and from the situation in its entirety, so I thought I’d share everything I’ve learned so you can know to not follow in my footsteps.
- “keep him in your life until you hate him”
-
I’ve heard this phrase so many times, and it never reigned true for me in all honesty. I kept my ex in my life, knowing I wasn’t strong enough to let go, but hoping and praying that one day, I’d hate him enough to cut him off. Surprise! It never happened.
I hated him so much at times, but it got to the point where I began to hate myself to such an extreme extent because I couldn’t cut him off. Honestly, I’ve never experienced such a strong amount of self-hatred as I did when I still had my ex in my life. I truly resented myself, and kept wondering why I wasn’t able to cut him off. I had tried so many times, but one of us always ended up reaching out, failing any short-lived progress I had pathetically made at no contact.
I honestly can’t even fathom how many times I’d told my friends “I’m done with him, for REAL this time.” My guess? At least 50 times. Whether that strongly worded statement lasted from as short as a few minutes to as long as a few days, I never really was able to keep my word.
I told myself that if he ever did something bad enough then I’d be able to cut him off, but this was never true. He would disrespect me in ways that I would never even be able to fathom in my worst nightmares, whether it was going on and on to my roommate about how embarrassed and mortified he was to be friends with me while he was sitting right next to me, or venting about how much he missed his ex-situationship after we had sex and how being with me made him miss her more, or putting in earbuds and watching YouTube while I was sobbing next to him. Then the next day we’d be lying in bed together cuddling as if nothing had happened.
I hated him so much, but I cared for him so much too, and couldn’t bring myself to let go. While the commonly uttered “Keep him in your life until you hate him” may be true for some people, it unfortunately was never true for me. Instead of hating him, I hated myself, and even that wasn’t enough for me to cut him off.
I’m sure you’re wondering, “Emma, what the hell made you cut your ex off after all that time? What did he do that was that bad for you to finally manage to let him go?” Honestly? I just couldn’t do it anymore. When I broke no contact in April, I wanted to just be friends with him. I missed our friendship and hoped that things would go back to it was before I blocked him, but it was impossible; things just weren’t the same.
I tried pretending that our friendship was the same but it just wasn’t. He was really hurt and on edge since I’d cut him off out of the blue after meeting a guy at a party in February, and he didn’t fully trust that I wouldn’t cut him off again. I also refused to hangout with him and wanted to be solely friends, and I think this had him even more on edge. Our friendship just felt so fabricated and transactional and I just couldn’t do it anymore, so I cut things off with him one last and final time.
I remember at one point he asked me why I chose to be friends with him, and I honestly didn’t know what to say. I just responded to his text saying, “I don’t know”, and I think it was in that moment that I knew I had to end our “friendship”.
- you shouldn’t keep someone in your life if you’re constantly venting about them
-
This is something I didn’t realize for so long until a conversation I had with my roommate. Things with my ex and I were calm, and I was in my roommate’s room about half an hour before my therapy session, complaining about how I had nothing to talk about. She looked at me and said “Girl, talk about your unresolved trauma!”
It was like I had a lightbulb moment. I had started going to therapy in the summer to talk about my ex, and months (and thousands of dollars) later, I was still talking about my ex. I had never even fathomed diving into past trauma with my therapist, when that’s literally what therapy is for. My therapist had listened to me rant about my ex over and over and over again, telling her every detail of all of the terrible things he’d done in the past week. I practically had a list of new ways he had disrespected me every session. I started making a list in my Notes app of everything I wanted to talk about in therapy, and my ex’s name was always written down in that list every week.
I remember one session in specific I had with my therapist, where I told her I was done with my ex “for real this time”, the same unauthentic phrase I’d sputtered to everyone in my life. She told me she didn’t believe me, and I swore to her up and down that I was doing no-contact for good. That I wasn’t lying this time. She laughed and told me she didn’t believe me, but that she wanted me to prove her wrong. I was so confident that I’d come into our session a week later bragging and gloating about how she was wrong and I kept my word.
I think I lasted a little over 12 hours before breaking no contact that time and going right back into the cycle I swore I was leaving.
I had vented about my ex so often that it honestly started to hurt my friendships. My ex was all I would ever talk about, and it got to the point where I wasn’t able to tell any of my friends anything about my ex because they were so sick of hearing about him and how I was continuously letting myself get disrespected.
Regardless, whether it’s a friend, a partner, or an ex that still manages to linger in your life, you shouldn’t keep someone in your life if you’re constantly feeling the need to vent about them. Relationships, whether platonic or romantic, are meant to bring happiness and peace into your life, not stress and anger. If you’re finding yourself always ranting about someone, whether you’re venting to a friend, a family member, a therapist, a pet, or my personal favorite, the Photo Booth on my computer, maybe it’s your sign that they shouldn’t be in your life.
It’s totally normal to vent about friends and partners every so often. But once it becomes frequent, that’s when it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Coming to this realization was so life-changing, and while I definitely wasted thousands of dollars spending my therapy sessions talking about every sh*tty thing my ex had done in the past week and how much I desired the strength to let him go, it’s remarkable being able to recognize the growth I’d made in the past few months after coming to that realization.
- healing isn’t linear
-
In my first original draft of this article, before breaking no contact, I had written “I’ll be honest, there are definitely some days where I get such a strong urge to break no contact and go back in the cycle that I ever so dreaded being trapped in. I think I just miss our conversations at times and the connection that we had, but I always force myself to remember that I’ll be able to make an even better connection with someone who’s actually right for me.”
This excerpt definitely proves that healing genuinely isn’t linear, because I can’t fathom myself being in contact with that man ever again. Cutting him off is one of the best things I ever did for myself, and there’s absolutely nothing I miss about having him in my life.
While moving on is such a hard thing to do, you shouldn’t beat yourself up for the days that you do miss your ex. I see heartbreak as grieving the loss of someone, and it isn’t an easy thing to do. You can honestly be fully moved on and still have those days where you think about your ex, because when you spend such a long time being in love with someone, it’s hard to not think about them. While I may think about my ex and just feel so much resentment, it’s so normal to reminisce on someone, even if they weren’t healthy.
It’s so important to recognize that the healing process isn’t linear and moving on comes in so many different shapes and forms.
- Music doesn’t always help…
-
Lots of people say that listening to sad music after a breakup is what helps them move on but for me, it was the complete opposite. My go-to song was “Nobody Gets Me” by SZA, and my friends can attest; I played that song every single day for months, screaming to it with all my heart until my lungs were sore. That song honestly made the thought of no contact seem genuinely impossible, and I feel like it’s realistically part of the reason I wasn’t able to let go of my ex. While there were definitely other songs I could’ve listened to to help move on, “Nobody Gets Me” shouldn’t have been one of them!
I think it’s really important to recognize what songs you’re listening to during no contact. While I’d definitely recommend “stranger” by Olivia Rodrigo, which has since been my favorite song ever since its release, as well as “My Kink is Karma” by Chappell Roan, make sure you aren’t listening to songs that’ll make it harder to cut your ex off.
- NEVER ignore the red flags
-
When my ex and I dated, looking back, there were so many red flags that I stupidly ignored. It got to the point where I made a list one day of all of the red flags I had ignored in our six months of dating, and wound up with over a hundred red flags on that list.
I saw all of the red flags and just ignored them because I was delusional and in love, and it ended up biting me in the ass. It’s so important to recognize red flags early in a relationship so you can save yourself from future heartbreak. Your person will not have a mountain of red flags that make you cringe every time you think about it. Remember this!
- know your mf worth!
-
You deserve to be treated like a princess.
This is something I wish I had known years ago. My best friend would tell me practically every single day that I was receiving the bare minimum, and would constantly tell me to “know my worth”. I’d only been in toxic relationships, and I’d always say that I liked toxicity, but honestly, for some reason, I felt like I deserved to be treated poorly.
It wasn’t until I finally got into a healthy relationship that I recognized my worth and realized that I deserved to be treated with nothing but love and kindness. While it may not have lasted, I learned that I am capable of healthy love, and that it’s absolutely not normal to be crying over your boyfriend almost every day.
Recognizing my worth and what I deserve has led to so much love and happiness in my life. Nobody deserves the bare minimum. While you may be adamant that you love toxic men, deep down, you know this just isn’t true. If you haven’t already, take some time to recognize your worth and the healthy love that you truly deserve.
- learn to be okay by yourself first
-
I’ve unfortunately come to terms with the fact that I haven’t actually been alone in a really long time, and it’s something that has really sabotaged me in my relationships, especially with my ex. I had such a fear of being alone, and it only deepened my attachment to my ex and made it feel genuinely impossible to cut him off. I was so scared of not having a man in my life, and I hated the feeling of being alone without someone I could tell every detail of my day to, something I was forced to endure every time we managed to attempt no contact.
If you aren’t okay with being alone, you shouldn’t be in a relationship, plain and simple. While that may sounds like a BS stereotypical phrase, it’s true. It only leads to a dependency that will be incredibly difficult to get rid of, which I had to learn the hard way. It’s best to take some time to yourself, and to love being single, before you can truly commit to someone.
- Be understanding of others
-
During my freshman year of college, about a year before this toxic cycle began, I had a friend who was in the exact same situation I was in, down to the tee. She was my absolute best friend, and practically my sister, but I was so judgmental of her and didn’t understand why she couldn’t just block her ex and move on.
She’d tell me that she couldn’t eat, sleep, and was losing hair anytime she tried no contact with her ex, but I didn’t understand and just thought she was being dramatic. She kept telling me she’d blocked him, but then would be texting him anytime we were hanging out.
I expressed how I felt about him and the situation in its entirety, even going so far as to send her a huge paragraph saying that I was sick of hearing about him and that she needed to learn to have some self worth. This caused such a huge divide in our friendship and was ultimately the reason our friendship ended.
Looking back, I wish I could talk to her now and say that I understand, and that it’s truly not easy to get out of a toxic cycle like that. Even now, I still feel so bad about how I treated her and how I refused to listen or try to comprehend what she was going through. It didn’t make any sense to me until my ex and I broke up.
If you have a friend that might be going through something like this, genuinely just listen to them. They don’t want to hear how they need self worth or they have to cut their ex off, because they know. Sometimes, we just want to vent and have someone listen to us without getting advice.
- It isn’t impossible to leave the cycle
-
When I was trapped in this toxic cycle, I thought it was genuinely impossible to leave. I’d tried so many times but every time I blocked him, it felt like I was losing a part of me. I had his number memorized, so it wasn’t like I could just delete his contact and forget about him.
I didn’t know how I would ever possibly cut him off, but I’m here to tell you now that it is possible. It’s important to do what’s best for you and your mental health, even if it hurts for a while.
When I cut my ex off in February, it was so hard. He began commenting on old Venmo transactions, texting my roommate, DMing all of my Instagram accounts, showing up at my apartment just so I’d see him in my Ring camera, and even spam-emailing me from multiple different email accounts in a desperate attempt to win me back. It was so hard to cut him off after this, and I even responded to his emails for a little bit.
I eventually decided that I needed to do what was ultimately best for me. I stopped responding to his emails and told him that things were genuinely done between us.
This just proves that it genuinely is possible to leave a toxic cycle, no matter how hard it may be.
- know who your friends are
-
When I was in this toxic cycle with my ex, I vented to every single one of my friends about my situation. Almost all of my friends made me feel bad about this, just shaming me for still being attached to him. However, my roommate encouraged having my ex in my life. She said that she didn’t see anything wrong with us being together, and anytime I’d debate doing no contact, I’d go to her to vent, only for her to influence me to invite him over that night.
It got to the point when I had cut him off in the beginning of February, and I went to the bar with my roommate and some of her friends for Valentine’s Day. I told her multiple times before I started drinking to not let me call my ex under any circumstances, and she agreed. Eventually, as the night went on, I complained to my roommate about how I wanted to break no contact and call my ex. “Call him!” she encouraged. I told her that I couldn’t. This happened a few times, only for her to eventually pull up her phone, call him, and put it up to my ear.
We talked on the phone for about ten seconds before I realized that I’d just broken no contact, leaving me running out of the bar sobbing. Looking back on this, my roommate absolutely should not have encouraged me to break no contact with my toxic ex; a true friend wouldn’t do this.
It’s so important to be aware of who your friends are. If your friends are encouraging having someone toxic in your life, then they just aren’t good friends, plain and simple. If your friends are shaming you for having an unhealthy attachment and constantly making you feel bad about it, they aren’t good friends either, and they just don’t understand.
It’s really hard being stuck in a toxic cycle with no one to turn to, so it’s important to recognize who your real friends are—the ones who support you, lift you up, and help you break free from negativity and toxicity.