Most of us have had that one love that is so hard to let go of. You know which love this is. The love that physically makes your heart hurt when you imagine a life without them. Because in order for that great love to ever have existed, it had to be great at some point. You had to be happier than you’ve ever been and imagined that this was your person. When that fairytale has vanished, you are left with these memories of what you had together — and that makes it incredibly hard to let go.

I have recently gone through this struggle and faced it with many hidden tears in my bedroom and fake smiles everywhere else because on the inside, my heart aches with what could have been, or what could be if I could just keep holding on.

So how did I tell myself it was time to let go?

My first indication was the instinct of feeling worth less than what I am. I felt insecure about myself because I was making excuses for the other person. This made me feel as though I was at fault, that I was doing something wrong, even though I was not the untrustworthy and destructive one in the relationship. It is so easy to make excuses for the person you love, sometimes without even realizing, because your love for them blinds you from the significance of their mistakes.

My next cue was that we seemed to be causing each other more harm than good. A relationship should be a haven, a place of comfort from the big scary world we live in. My relationship was no longer this. My relationship became a place of blame and discussing each others’ faults and wrongdoings more often than simply being happy to be a part one another’s lives.

He wasn’t only to blame, my insecurities that I had been feeling from earlier caused me to not be a good partner back to him. I realized that not only was he no longer healthy for me, but I was not benefiting him in his life anymore either. This wasn’t fair to either of us, but was a step closer to being accepting that I needed to let go.

The hardest part was accepting that this person could not love me the way I needed to be loved. No matter how much love I gave him, I couldn’t force him to love me, to talk to me, or to be honest with me more than what he was willing. I had to make a decision, which was that I needed more. It wasn’t fair to cut myself short. I also had to comprehend that someone who could lie to me and break my trust so deeply, did not deserve me in their life.

This is difficult because even though they don’t deserve me, I deserved to love someone the way I loved him. So, I didn’t want to relinquish that because even though they don’t deserve it, I did, I did everything right — so why should I give up the relationship I worked so hard for and deserved?

Accepting that I deserve someone who will love me as much as I love them was the final realization I had to make to be able to let go.

After it's all said and done, the best thing you can do is wish them the best. Remind them of the things that did make you great together but hope they can learn from what didn’t work for their future relationships. It’s easy to get heated and say mean things. It is so easy to say hurtful things because you want that person to hurt just as much as you are.

Don’t do this though, remember that this is someone you loved/ love deeply and that you both owe it to be decent and respectful to each other. I sincerely wish the best to my previous partner and hope he will learn from the mistakes he made in our relationship and never make them again with someone else. It hurts, it will for a while because that person becomes your best friend.

Each relationship is different, each has their own faults, memories, positives and negatives. I just remember that if a love could be as great as the one I had, even with so many faults and negatives existing — a love without these negatives will exist too and will be even greater than my broken heart can imagine.