This is one of the hardest feelings I’ve ever had to understand.

It’s natural to focus on the person who’s been left—their heartbreak so visible, their grief spilling out for the world to see. But what about the one who leaves?

The weight they carry is quieter, almost invisible, yet it’s no less real. Falling out of love wasn’t a sudden thing for me. It wasn’t a lightning strike or a shattering blow. It was an unraveling—a slow, silent breaking of the threads that once bound us so tightly together. Piece by painful piece, I came to understand what I had to do, even as the knowledge threatened to break me. How do you destroy something you once held sacred? How do you look into the eyes of someone who still loves you, someone who sees you as their everything, and say the words that will shatter their heart? Saying it didn’t just hurt them—it hurt me. It broke something inside me, too. But staying would have been a lie, and I couldn’t live with that. Lies have a way of poisoning the things we try to protect. Leaving felt like the cruelest thing I could do, but deep down, I knew it was the only way to find truth again—to reclaim the parts of myself I had lost along the way.

It wasn’t fair. It never is. It felt like taking away the ground beneath their feet and watching them fall, knowing it was my choice that sent them tumbling. And yet, I couldn’t stay. I had to do what felt unbearable, because not doing it would have been worse. We both suffered. We both grieved. But the burden of leaving weighed heavy on me—the guilt of inflicting pain on someone I once would have done anything to protect. There were no open arms for my sorrow, no space for my tears. But I mourned, just the same.

Breaking their heart didn’t mean I didn’t care. In truth, I cared so deeply that I had to let them go. Loving them meant choosing honesty over comfort, even when it felt like it was tearing me apart.