I thought I had cracked the code. I watched my friends fight with their partners about time, money, and attention, and I decided I would be different. I would be the cool girl. The easy one. The breeze that never turned into a storm.
He always told me he loved how “low maintenance” I was.
I wore that label like a badge of honor. I swallowed my complaints. I silenced my needs. I never nagged, never asked for gifts, never demanded time. When he forgot our anniversary, I smiled and said it didn’t matter. When he stayed out late, I never asked where he had been. I thought I was being the perfect partner, creating a friction-free life for him.
I made myself small so he would stay.
I pruned away the parts of myself that were loud, needy, or complex until there was almost nothing left but a pleasant, agreeable shadow.
Then came the breakup. It wasn’t a fight. It was a dismissal.
He sat me down and told me he had met someone else. I expected him to say she was easier, calmer, or even lower maintenance than me.
I was wrong.
He left me for a woman who was loud, demanding, and high-maintenance.
I knew who she was. She was a firecracker. She picked fights in public. She demanded expensive trips. She took up all the air in the room.
“Why?” I whispered, tears finally falling now that it was too late. “I gave you peace. I gave you everything you said you wanted.”
He looked at me, and his expression wasn’t regretful; it was bored.
“‘She challenges me,’” he said, his eyes lighting up in a way they never did for me.
He looked at my tear-streaked face—the face of a woman who had spent years anticipating his every desire so he would never have to ask.
“‘You just… exist.’“.
The words hit me harder than a scream. I hadn’t become his perfect partner; I had become furniture. I had smoothed out my edges until there was nothing left for him to hold onto.
I erased myself for a man who wanted someone to erase him. He didn’t want the peace I sacrificed my soul to provide; he wanted the passion I had strangled to keep him. I was left alone in the quiet life I had built, realizing that in my attempt to be everything he wanted, I had turned myself into nothing at all.
