Reasons why I am glad he's gone

I came across a blog post which was about how the writer had struggled through a break-up and got her life back on track. Like me, she had been cheated on, but unlike me, she was married and had spent 13 years of her life with him - he was all she had known for a very long time.

I knew that cheating was not something which had exclusively happened to me, but it felt like I was the only one who had been unable to recover from it and was falling down and down into a crazy spiral. Reading her story put things into perspective that I had actually been really really lucky this time.

The blog also focused on how creating simple lists helped the writer. So I decided to try it out and see if it worked for me too. Here we go..

Reasons why finding out was lucky

1. I could have ended up actually falling hard for him, which would have made it even harder to recover
2. The longer I would have spent with him, the more opportunities for 'real love' I would have let go by
3. I found out during the Summer and I'm still finding it hard to work - imagine if it had happened during exam time!
4. I would have actually tried to make it work fruitlessly
5. I would have told my parents about him, which would have hurt them and then when I realised he was cheating I would have spread my pain to them too
6. It was a timely decision - the start of a new academic year - I could plan ahead better
7. I was no longer deluded that he is perfection itself
8. Imagine if I had actually never found out and ended up engaged or married to a guy who had never cared less!
9. I only wasted one year with him - any delays would have just increased that time
10. I always knew that we didn't fit in well together. This was proof that my gut instinct is almost always right

Reasons I am glad he is gone

1. I deserve better, but I couldn't have had that if I had continued with him
2. He consumed a lot of my time and effort and left me feeling exhausted because I was sick and tired of trying to work out his lies - I can now direct that energy in a more positive direction
3. I was made to feel inferior. Whether jokes or not, he made snide comments about my looks
4. He was a compulsive liar and incapable of being direct and straight with anyone (including family and friends)
5. He never made time for me and starved me of attention to make me want him more
6. He physically hurt me when he was drunk
7. He had a drinking problem which he was unwilling to accept or change
8. I had to find excuses all the time to not meet up with him because he was unwilling to give me space to breathe and I felt suffocated in the relationship
9. He would have held me back - he didn't support me in my dreams and visions
10. He never kept his promises. Ever.
11. There was no trust in the relationship which made us both paranoid about the other
12. He proved that there was no commitment in him - he moved on within a week and used 'I love you' loosely
13. I don't have to continuously try to remove his insecurities about himself - continuously telling him I want him or that I thought he was cute etc.
14. There are so many things I didn't do with him which gives me the opportunity to have a lot of 'special' moments with the perfect guy
15. I learnt a lot about relationships and about what it takes to make them healthy and well-functioning. This means that next time I will be better at it - meaning both of 'us' will be happier
16. I realised that I didn't need anyone to 'complete' me. If I wasn't enough on my own, I would never be enough in a relationship. I got this wake up call from the movie Cool Runnings where an ex-Olympian realises that "Having a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you are not enough without it, you will never be enough with it" which woke me up to the fact that I need to be enough for myself. I need to be happy on my own to stand a chance of being happy in a relationship
17. When (Note: not if) I recover and make something of my life, I will realise that I am strong enough to overcome anything life throws my way
18. I have so much going for me. I needed to lose this relationship to wake up to the other magical things about my life
19. I have more time for friends and friendships now
20. I have been strong enough to let him go. 

Just writing down the reasons felt empowering. I look back at these reasons and sometimes they feel trivial and my relationship with Adam feels much more important that any reason could justify. After all, I was fully aware of these reasons every time I kept running back to him. But now that I have got closure, listing the reasons feels much more natural to the 'moving-on' process.