“You deserve better than that” is probably a phrase that you have heard from your loved ones whilst going through a breakup far more than once. Whether they are referring to you deserving a better significant other, to be treated better, or even just a better reaction to a certain situation.

When your Mom walked in on you crying again, I’m sure she told you “You deserve better than this”. Or, when your best friend picked up the phone to you upset at 2 a.m. for the third time in a week, she probably screamed, “You deserve better than this—and they are right. Most of the time, by the end of the relationship, both of you deserve better than "this."

Outside of other people telling you, I guarantee that everyone going through a breakup has at least once told themselves "I deserve better than this." There are probably times that you have been sitting waiting for your phone to ring, that you have told yourself "I deserve better than this." There are probably other times that you have sat staring at a hurtful text and cried to yourself "I deserve better than this". There are probably times that you have laid in bed at night, looking at the ceiling, absolutely exhausted, and sighed "I deserve better than this."

The truth is, you, your Mom, your best friend are all right. You do deserve better than whatever "this" may be. The other side to that truth is that whoever you were with deserves better too. What a person in a relationship deserves is not a one-sided coin—respect, appreciation, and loyalty must be reciprocated, and when that stops, both of you stop giving each other what one another deserves.

In my opinion, a lot of relationships start to fail for that very reason. Two people stop respecting and appreciating each other. The relationship starts to deteriorate until there really is nothing left. The person that you break up with very often looks nothing like the person that you started dating. If they were the same person, or if you were the same person, the relationship probably would not have ever ended.

When you meet someone, get to know them, and eventually enter a relationship with them, they are arguably the best version of themselves. The opposite is also true, you are arguably the best version of yourself as well. As far as the two of you know, you are both at your best, and have the potential to be even better together—so you give it a shot.

And, at the beginning you two are the best versions of yourselves, and even better together. Everyone seems perfect at the beginning of a relationship. It is not until you truly get to know all sides of someone and start to become familiar with the skeletons in their closets that the facade slowly but surely fades away.

You cannot choose to just know the good parts of someone. Whilst getting to know someone, you get to know all of them—the good, the bad, the ugly. As a relationship progresses, so does the process of getting to know each other. Simultaneous with this process are the processes of letting your guards down, getting comfortable with each other, and settling into who each other is. Unfortunately, while all of these processes are going on, we often stop appreciating each other. We often get all too comfortable leaning on each other too much or find it too easy to lose our tempers on each other.

In short, over time, a lot of us stop being the best versions of ourselves. It is so easy to point a finger or sling blame at one another while going through the painful end of a relationship, but it truly is a futile practice. A lot of the time, a majority of a relationship ending can be attributed just that—we both stopped being the best versions of ourselves.

It takes a very mature pair of people to look at each other and say, "Both of us deserve better than the people that we have been towards each other as of late. We deserve better. We deserve the best versions of each other", and to force themselves into walking away before things get messy. Whether you walk away until the timing is better, or truly part ways for good, realizing that you both deserve better is so vital to parting ways in a healthy way and moving forward in a mature manner.

So, yes. You, your mother, and your best friend are all correct—you do deserve better. But so does he or she. By the end of a relationship, both of you deserve better.