Tom didn’t even bother to stop me from leaving. In the end, I sold off the wallet, deleted all of our photos together, unfollowed and blocked him from all social media, erased his number from my phone, and tried to move on.

It was only later on that I found out from a mutual friend that Tom was a notorious charmer, a player who liked to secretly date several women at the same time, simply because he preferred some excitement in his life.

Apparently, because I refused to sleep with Tom a few times, he found me boring and started cheating on me with other girls during the first few months of our relationship.

And I, the idiot, never knew at all.

It made me feel so ashamed to this day. It left me with such a terrible insecurity in my heart that I would carry with me for a long time. Tom was my first boyfriend and yet he betrayed me in such a cruel way.

It took me a long time to recover from that.

***

Three years later, after I quit college and started working several part-time jobs, I met someone new.

His name was Ben Harper.

I decided to give love a second chance after becoming jealous of all my friends who were dating and looking as happy as they could be. Even though I had become so insecure, Ben was mature, and he helped me try to see the world from a different perspective.

He was three years older than me; I was 21 at the time, and he was 24. I was still too young to continue working as hard as I was, while he already had a stable career after graduation.

The two of us met for the first time at the park when he was walking his dog, a lovely golden retriever named Lily. I had been entranced by Lily at first sight and asked to pet her, which he allowed. He started a casual conversation, and then after that, the words just flowed between us so naturally.

We started meeting in the park a few times, where I would pet Lily and give her snacks while he would strike up a conversation with me. We quickly became friends after sharing some common interests, and I agreed to go on a date when he asked if we could try it out.

I really liked Ben at first. He had a strong sense of responsibility and was very sure of himself. He was quite honest and never held anything back, even though it might seem crass of him to do so. In my heart, it felt refreshing to meet such a personality in this depressing world, so I subconsciously relied on him.

With him, it felt transparent, and I never felt like he was cheating on me because he checked in on me so often and always texted me every morning and night. He was so committed that it was surprising and kind of flattering.

But it was also so, so overwhelming.

As the days passed and we were only three months into our relationship, he started to become overbearing. Possessive. Too ahead of himself.

Because apparently, for Ben, a commitment was a two-way relationship.

That wasn’t a problem for me because that’s the way it should be when it comes to a relationship, but I had mentioned to him a few times before that I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, that I just wanted to keep things casual between us for now.

“That’s fine with me,” he told me back then in a confident tone of voice. “I won’t force you if you’re not ready.”

With those words, I trusted him.

And later on, my trust in him shattered.

He started to get… impatient. Insecure. His calls and texts increased, his demands grew, and he even started giving me these ridiculous curfews.

I was not to stay out too late at night even though I worked night shifts on some days, and he also told me that I was obligated to inform him wherever I went.

He even convinced me to move in with him so he could protect me, or whatever bullshit excuse that was. He started referring to me as ‘his’, as if I were some sort of object that he needed to possess.

Things were escalating too fast for me, and I was feeling more and more like a prisoner in the relationship rather than a bird being allowed to fly free. It was such a suffocating feeling that I just wanted to get out as soon as possible.

It took me a long time to break free of Ben. I was young at the time, a college dropout who worked several part-time jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, he had a steady job and often bought me food and many other things. He sometimes visited my family and brought them food and gifts as well. My parents adored him for his generosity.

But I felt suffocated. I felt guilty. I felt so conflicted in my mind that I even wondered if it was a good thing for me to break up with him. He helped me financially and was so good to my parents. Who on earth was I to let him go like that? What Ben wanted from me was my dedication and commitment to the relationship. Why was I dawdling? All I needed to do was give him my heart and all of my time. That was all.

My thoughts swirled around like that for a long time.

I had been so trapped in my guilt and hesitation that in the end, my younger siblings, Ken and Louisa, had to finally convince me to let go. That it was not worth the stress to stay.

That if I was unhappy, I needed to break it off.

So I did.

“Let’s break up,” I told him a few days later after collecting my thoughts.

Ben hadn’t been happy to hear those words from my mouth. He threw a fit and started hitting me, which shocked me because he had always been so gentle. He was demanding and overbearing, but he never touched or hurt me like that.

It had been messy. Ken and Louisa were outside Ben’s apartment so that they could be there for me after I broke it off. But after I screamed loudly, all hell broke loose.

Ken barged in, and he was the angriest I had ever seen him before. Louisa was horrified and crying while calling the police on her phone.

In the end, Ben was taken in for questioning by the police, and I had to go along with them to give my statement. To make a long story short, Ben went to jail, and that was when I found out about his past history of assaulting women. I had to get a restraining order against him just in case, but then he was forced to move away.

I never saw him again after that.

And since then, I stopped believing in love.

Love was just a fantasy. In real life, people were never what they seemed. They could be the sweetest and most innocent people I knew, but they would always betray me in the end. I had to learn the hard way that they never actually loved me.

It was then that I realized how pathetic a person I really was.

Since love betrayed me, I might as well never love someone genuinely again.