I loved her for 30 years. Now, I’m finally letting go.
We broke up at 18. She moved forward. I kept hoping she would come back.
I’ve finally cut Carrie out of my life, completely.
I finally saw the truth: she doesn’t want to be friends. She doesn’t want to “keep in touch.” She doesn’t want to exchange family Christmas photos.
I don’t mean anything to her, anymore…
And that’s okay.
In fact, that’s how it should be.
But that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I loved her more than I ever did any girl before her — or since. She was my first love, and while to her that meant one thing (one in a whole string of men until she finally married her husband)… to me it meant everything.
To me… I believed that “first love” had to equal “forever love.”
I believed that so strongly, it took me thirty years before I was finally able to let it go.
We broke up when we were 18. And I know we both wanted things to end. We never actually spoke the words, “It’s over.” But we both knew the moment the love was gone.
I really did love her! I think we really loved each other. She says I was her first love, so… I need to let that count for something.
We started dating when we were 16, a few months after she and my friend Nathan broke up. I’d liked her even when she was dating Nathan, so once they stopped dating, and sufficient time has passed for me to be free to pursue my friend’s ex… I went for it.
She didn’t disappoint. She was everything I wanted a 16-year-old girlfriend to be, or so it seemed. She was really special, and I love the time we spent together… but even in the beginning, there were warning signs. I just didn’t listen to them.
I wanted to love her forever — or did I?
I was in love with an incredible girl, who all my friends and family adored, and all agreed that we were perfect together. And loving her made me happy, in ways I hadn’t known before. So naturally, I wanted that happy feeling to last — and at 16, it’s probably pretty natural to think that feeling, and that love, is meant to last forever.
At least, that’s what I always thought.
But even before we broke up, I knew I didn’t want her anymore.
I still loved her. I’ll probably always love her! (I’m not one to believe that love ever ends, but I am learning that as people grow and circumstances change… the way we love those people changes, too.)
But even though I still loved her… I knew I was ready to move on. I knew I had no more interest in being her boyfriend, and I was eager to find someone new.
But she was perfect! Everybody said so. Even I believed it… even though she had already hurt my feelings so deeply, on multiple occasions, that I knew she wasn’t… I still wanted to believe that she was.
So when we broke up, instead of feeling free to move on and find somebody new to love… I felt like I had mistakenly thrown away my one chance at finding my happily ever after.
I believed we were destined to be together — and that I was the one who ruined it. And worse, I believed I had to keep that to myself. Because if I told anybody we had broken up, they’d think I ruined it all, too.
I really did a number on myself.
I wasn’t trying to… but at 18, I didn’t know any different. I’d already learned that most of the people I thought I could trust, would always find a way to make all my problems “my fault” and my responsibility. Nobody knew how to just hear me… and support me through my struggles.
They either blamed me for creating the problem — or they blamed me for not correcting the problem, after the fact.
The breakup I never spoke of
I couldn’t talk to anybody about anything… certainly not anything as serious as losing the love of my life! No sir, that was one hundred percent my fault, and my responsibility. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and something I’d just have to carry alone, for however long it takes me to learn to set it down and leave it behind me.
And I could never set it down.
Everywhere I went, I knew I had ruined my own life… and the life of the only woman I could ever love. Her unhappiness became my responsibility. She was miserable because I had left her. Because we belong together and we both know it, and I was making it impossible for that to happen…
So of course she could never be happy without me.
I wasn’t only hurting myself by letting her go — I was telling her that she’s not good enough to be loved by the man she’s supposed to spend eternity with.
That’s a lot of responsibility to put on my shoulders. But I believed it was true, and I knew in my head and my heart that if I told anybody what I had done… they would all agree that I’d royally messed things up and there was no way to recover from it all, and that now the only option I had, was to just somehow learn to live with it all.
I believed that so strongly that I became afraid to tell anybody what I’d done, because I knew they would condemn me. I knew they would tell me it was all my fault. Or, if not that, they would simply tell me that I need to let go, and move on, and find somebody new.
But how can I let go of the love of my life? What would that say about me, if I abandoned true love just because she went off and married somebody else after I joined the Navy and left her behind?
What kind of man gives up on true love and happily ever after, just because the object of his affection decides to build a whole life without him?
How could I live with myself if I ever stopped loving her?
So I just swallowed it all. I buried the pain, and the embarrassment, and the regret, and I tried to act like I was above it all and like, any minute, Carrie would just wake up and realize she belongs with me, and she would abandon her loser husband and grab her daughters and come live with me, and we could finally set everything right.
(Which, I don’t know that her husband is a loser. But… he’s not Michael Glenn… so, how happy can she be? Kidding. Mostly.)
What young love really looks like
But even though I wanted our relationship to end…
When everything was finally over, it really broke my heart to say goodbye to something I wanted it to become, even though it was never meant to be anything more than what it was: a fun, exciting, fascinating, surface-level, first love.
It wasn’t for us to be in love forever. But it was for us to learn from each other, what it’s like to simply fall in love, and how that can make things better, and can add layers and dimensions and depth to a person’s life, that there’s no other way to experience, aside from truly being in love with somebody else.
And for that… our relationship was ideal.
I did learn how to be in love. I learned what it feels like. I learned how powerful, inspiring, and beautiful, love can be. But I also found out how much the person who loves you, can also become the person who hurts you more than anybody else ever can.
Carrie was a nice girl. (I think.) But she wasn’t a great girlfriend. She was critical of a lot of the things I did and said. She judged me for things I wasn’t looking to be judged for.
I’m pretty sure she saw other dudes behind my back. (And I never told anybody about that, because I was afraid they’d tell me to break up with her… and I needed her in my life. I needed her to love me, even if it did mean putting up with her indiscretions.)
Sometimes, when we got together, she could be really distant… almost a stranger in certain ways… other times, it felt like she only saw me as a friend — or maybe, she only saw me as an option, a placeholder until some other boy came along… but it has been thirty years, so it’s possible that some of what I’ve written here, is the way I remember things but not the way things actually were.
That said…
Sometimes, our relationship was really beautiful.
She was my date at my sister’s wedding… and she was so amazingly beautiful, in such a simple but elegant dress. Her hair, her makeup, her poise, the way she interacted with my family — even my idiot uncle who kept giving her the hardest time. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
Making out (which, is every teenager’s favorite pastime) was spectacular. Everything about her body lit me up. Her kiss, her touch, her skin, her breath, her scent… she was the girl next door times infinity…
She was like nothing I’d ever known before. And she wasn’t even close to the first girl I ever made out with… but with her, it was like… none of the other girls even existed… not even in my memory…
Sometimes we’d just hang out, casual-like… just two friends chitchatting. Every great once in a while she’d drop her guard and I could see who she really was underneath the facade. And she was so inspiring.
But most of the time, I wondered whether she loved me or not. Sometimes I wondered if she even liked me, the way she treated me. Sometimes, all I could feel was pain, and heartbreak, and like I was the biggest mistake she’d ever made in her life.
We had problems. I know now, that every relationship does. But back then… I really believed if I just loved her enough, our problems would just go away. After all, true love conquers everything… even death… so why wouldn’t it be enough to make all our problems go away?
Better yet… if I truly loved her, we wouldn’t have any problems to begin with.
So naturally, any time that we did… I always believed it was my fault, because I wasn’t being a good enough boyfriend. And she didn’t do much to ever make me believe otherwise.
She made me feel like I was a bad boyfriend for “making her upset.” Like I don’t know if she did that intentionally — but that’s the way it always felt when we did have problems.
And I always accepted that responsibility, without hesitation. I took all the blame for anything that ever went wrong. I told myself it was my job to make everything right… and that if we were unhappy with each other, it fell to me to figure out how to make everything better.
In my mind, Carrie could do no wrong
It was never her fault. She was perfect — she couldn’t possibly do any wrong, even if she tried.
And over time, that built up and started to hurt me more and more. And still, I buried everything inside. Still, I believed it was all my fault and I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because even if I did, they’d just agree with me and I’d only feel worse about all the wrong I was guilty of.
So I let it all build up, and fester beneath the surface, in places where I couldn’t even see it… couldn’t even name it… couldn’t ever bring it out into the light of day… because I was too ashamed of being the bad boyfriend I thought I’d become.
I kept all this to myself until earlier this year, when I started to open up with my friend Tara.
I started to sort of dance around the edges of this all… trying to gauge how much I could share and how much I could let go… and how much would send me into a tailspin, and make me feel more ashamed, more afraid, more uncomfortable…
More like I’m responsible for ruining mine and Carrie’s life forever, simply by being too ashamed to admit my mistakes, and ask for Carrie’s forgiveness, and beg her to come back to me and try again.
The things I never told her — until I just had to!
I kind of did beg Carrie to come back to me, last summer. I shouldn’t have. She is married, after all… and whether that’s a happy marriage or not, I still have respect for the institution.
But I couldn’t hold it all inside anymore! I had to tell Carrie that I still love her, and that I wish I’d told her, all those years ago, not to marry her husband, but to wait for me to come home from the Navy, and give us another chance.
I told her everything. I told her things no man should ever tell a married woman. But I wasn’t telling “a married woman” all these things; I was telling the love of my life, the only girl I’ll ever want, or need… the one who I can’t live without and who, if she would just come back to me, I know we could make it work this time, and we could both finally be happy…
And she called me and told me our time was done. She told me I will always be her first love… but that’s all we were ever meant to be for one another… and there is no future “us” for me to wait for.
And it tore me up but it was exactly what I needed to hear. And I needed to hear it from her. I never would’ve believed it, any other way. And I know it’s true; I know she’s right; I know we’re not each other’s one true love.
And it still cuts me so, so deep…
It’s been thirty years! And I’ve been waiting this whole time for the two of us to be reunited. I’ve been telling myself the same worn-out story that we were destined to be together forever, and I ruined it and there’s no coming back.
I’ve punished myself, one way or another, every day of my life for letting our relationship end. And it hurts more than anything for me to admit: staying friends with the woman I thought I was supposed to marry, has been the worst punishment of them all. It’s been a constant, daily reminder of how badly I messed things up between us, and how much I hate myself for losing my only chance at happiness, in this life and beyond.
And it’s time for that to end.
It’s time for me to stop pretending.
It’s time for me to stop hating myself, over something that wasn’t even my fault.
It’s time for me to finally let go
Our relationship didn’t end because I was a “bad boyfriend,” or because I was selfish, or because I grew tired of her and wanted to experience love with somebody new…
Our relationship ended because it had run its course. There was nothing left for us to learn from one another… nothing left for us to do in each other’s lives, except apparently to keep bringing one another down because I couldn’t let go of something that’s meant to be let go of.
I loved/love Carrie with all my heart. And even though I wanted our relationship to end… I never wanted our love to die. I tried with everything I had inside, to keep the love alive by staying friends with the woman who’d broken my heart worse than anyone alive…
I thought if I could just somehow pretend I wasn’t hurting, that maybe I could keep her in my life in some capacity… and maybe, someday, we could be reunited.
But I’m learning, that was another lie. A lie on top of a lie. And it wasn’t serving either one of us… but most of all, it hasn’t been serving me. I’ve refused to let myself move forward from the moment our relationship ended… because I believed if I ever did, it would invalidate the love that I do still have for her, deep in my heart.
That love will never go away. I think our attachments to other people can wither and die, if we neglect them or abuse them, or if we just spend enough time apart from each other… but I think love is pure and real… even if it’s not “lifelong” it’s still worth remembering… worth preserving… worth being thankful for.
I don’t think it’s possible for love to ever die.
But I do think it’s unhealthy for me to maintain an attachment — a living, breathing, connection — to Carrie. It doesn’t bring me anything but pain, that I should have let go of thirty years ago, when I was only 18 years old.
So I’m doing the next best thing:
I’m letting go now.
I’ve finally cut Carrie out of my life, completely.
And I’m afraid of what’s going to happen now. I’m afraid of all the feelings I’ve kept bottled up, for three decades. I’m afraid of the pain, and the grief, the embarrassment, and the sorrow…
But I won’t let it control my life any longer. I won’t hide anymore, from the things I need to resolve, so that I can be restored to full mental, emotional, and dare I say, spiritual health.
I don’t deserve to suffer, at my own hand, for something that I never even did wrong.
The only thing I could be accused of doing wrong, in all of these years, is not telling somebody else everything I’ve been going through — not asking for the help I need.
And this year, due in large part to my deep friendship with my incredible friend Tara Johns…
I’m finally letting go.
I’m finally moving on.
I’m finally getting better.
I’m finally asking for help.
Letting go starts by telling the truth
Letting go isn’t a single act — it’s a process. And it doesn’t start by forcing yourself to move on.
It starts by telling the truth. By speaking what’s been unspeakable. By saying: “I can’t keep carrying this alone.”
Here’s how to begin that process — gently.
1. Name the story you’re still carrying
We all have one: a memory, a relationship, a regret that still haunts us.
Write it down. Say it out loud. Be honest — even if it hurts. You don’t have to explain it yet. Just name it.
“The thing I’ve never been able to let go of is…”
2. Admit what’s been true (that you’ve never said aloud)
Letting go doesn’t mean rewriting history. It means letting yourself see it clearly for the first time.
What’s the part of this story you’ve been too ashamed or afraid to tell?
“The truth is… I still think it was all my fault.”
“The truth is… I didn’t want it to end, even though it needed to.”
3. Ask yourself: “What would letting go actually look like?”
Would you stop replaying the old conversation? Would you stop waiting for them to come back?
Would you stop punishing yourself for something you can’t change?
Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. It means loosening your grip on what’s still hurting you.
4. Let someone in
This is the part that changed everything for me. Not a grand gesture. Not some brave confrontation.
Just… telling someone I trust.
“There’s something I’ve never said out loud before. Can I tell you?”
When you stop carrying it alone… that’s when healing begins. And maybe, that’s how you finally start to move forward, too.
Self-Reflection: What are you still carrying?
Take your time. There’s no right way to do this.
Just find a quiet space, breathe, and start where it feels appropriate.
You can write your answers in a journal, type them out, or speak them aloud.
1. Name the story
What’s one relationship, event, or memory from your past that you’ve never fully let go of — even if it ended years ago?
(You don’t have to explain it. Just name it.)
2. Be honest about the weight
What have you been carrying, silently, about this story?
Regret?
Guilt?
The belief that it was all your fault?
A fantasy that it might still work out one day?
Something you wish you’d said but never did?
Write freely. Don’t edit. Don’t judge.
3. What would letting go look like?
If you could begin to let go of this story, what would that actually mean?
What would stop?
What would open up?
What might shift in the way you see yourself?
Follow-up question:
What’s been stopping you until now?
Be honest — not to blame yourself, but to understand what’s been in the way.
4. What do you need right now?
What do you need — right now — in order to begin healing?
Let your heart answer. Not your shame. Not your fear.
Just… your heart.
5. Who could you let in?
Is there someone in your life you could share even a piece of this story with?
What’s one sentence you could say to begin?“There’s something I’ve been carrying for a long time… and I think I’m finally ready to stop doing it alone.”
Final Thought
If you’ve been carrying something quietly for years — a heartbreak, a regret, a version of yourself you haven’t been able to forgive — I want you to know:
You’re not weak for holding on. You’re not broken because you haven’t let go.
Some pain takes time. Some grief stays longer than we expected. And some stories, we keep inside, not because we want to… because we don’t know how to say them out loud.
But you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.
Healing doesn’t always come from figuring it all out. Sometimes it starts with telling the truth to someone who’s safe enough to honestly receive it.
Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do isn’t moving on… it’s opening up, just enough to let someone in.
So let someone in today. Just a little.
And let your healing truly begin.
Beautifully written.
And deeply felt
by this reader, and friend.
Sending love.💞