Everything is easier said than done. Wanting something is easy. Saying something is easy. The challenge and the reward are in the doing.
Steve Maraboli
Way back in 2019, I used to have this lady friend who lost both her parents and her sibling at an early age and was basically seeing herself through school through the help of her boyfriend (now ex boyfriend). And I remember back then, they would always fight about one thing or the other and whenever she got back from his place, she would call me and two of our friends into her room to talk to us and sometimes just cry.
She wouldn't always go into details as to what their fight was all about but the few times she did, it was mostly about him cheating on her. To me back then, I felt a lot of the things he was doing was because he knew he was the only one she had and so that was what gave him the morale he needed to misbehave, that was what I thought. Although he wasn't always the one at fault everytime they fought, because she wasn't a saint either.
Well it got to a stage where myself and the two other friends just kinda got fed up with the whole thing (because she was now crying more consistently) and we had advised her to forget about all of her feelings for this guy but not break up with him. We knew she needed the guy for the money and help he was providing for her, but no one said she had to love him. And seeing how all of the issues they were having had something to do with the matters of the heart, we knew she would stop getting hurt the moment she saw the whole thing as a business transaction rather than a relationship.
I admit, it wasn't the best of advise but at the moment, it was the only thing we could think of because we knew that if she decided to leave him, she might end up dropping out of school and getting depressed due to the many bills she would have to pay herself.
Well, we had given her that advise hoping that she would take it but everytime he misbehaves and comes back to beg her, she willingly accepts his apology, while telling us that she still loves him and she doesn't know how to be with him for the money and not love him. To me, I felt she was just being dumb because it didn't really feel like a big deal to me, unloving someone or easily getting detached from something you've always been attached to, until it happened to me.
About a year or two later I found myself in love with someone but we always ended up getting into big arguments that would make us not talk to each other for days and sometimes a week and I knew this wasn't healthy. It is normal to fight in relationships but when it starts getting too consistent, then something is wrong somewhere. So I decided to pull the plug and called it quit. I didn't want to be like my friend who was always getting hurt and couldn't move on.
The first few days was the easiest because I was still angry at her but as time went on, it felt like I was going mad. I gave myself every reason to call or text, luckily I had made sure to delete all our conversations and number from my phone and yet, even though I knew all that, I still tried to communicate. Luckily for me, my friends came through and the moment I was able to distract myself with other things, keeping my mind busy, I found myself finally accepting the fact that what I did was for my own good and that it was better for things to be that way.
At the end of the day, the one thing I got from that whole experience is how difficult it really is getting detached from something or someone you're already used to. When my friend couldn't do it, I had thought she was weak until it happened to me, then I realized that most things are easier said than done.
