My first love ended in a devastating heartbreak - here's how I put myself back together

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a hopeless romantic. As a little girl, one of my favorite parts of Disney movies was watching the heroine and her love interest develop their relationship, especially when they got their happily ever after at the end of the story. I dreamed of the day I would find my Prince Charming and fall head over heels in love, have my first kiss, and get my own fairytale ending with a big wedding and a beautiful family.

I thought I found that with my first love, my high school sweetheart. His name was John. We met when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore in high school in our study hall. He was cute, funny and nerdy. We became friends quickly because of our shared love of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There was one time we wasted an entire class period talking with our mutual friend about our theories for the upcoming MCU films and the direction it was going. One day at the end of class, he told me he liked me. I wasn’t sure how I felt, but my dad told me to go for it. So when we went to see a movie with our friend that weekend, I told him I liked him too, and we started dating. I continued to remain uncertain for a while, especially when he told me he loved me quite early into our relationship, but as we kept on dating, I found myself falling deeper and deeper in love. We went to see movies at our houses or the movie theater, a local fall festival, homecoming dances and both of our proms. Before I realized it, I’d fallen madly in love with John. And I thought he loved me too. We started talking about building a future together when were both done with college. Graduating and getting married. Starting a family at some point. I was so happy - I could see the future I’d always dreamed of coming true with John!

But then something changed. His grades were too low to get into college, so he decided he wanted to join the Navy so he could get training for a good job that way. I wasn’t happy about it at first because I’d heard stories about what military boot camp, advanced training and service was like from my dad who served in the Army and later the Coast Guard. I knew it was going to be tough on John and it would be a long time before I saw him again. And I was worried for his safety, that if we went to war he’d be put on the front lines. But John didn’t see any other option. So after talking about it with him, my dad and my grandma, I eventually came around. It was hard to see him go off to boot camp, I remember we met up in the parking lot of a nearby Wendy’s so I could give him one last hug and kiss before he went off to basic training. I promised him I’d wait for him and stay loyal while he was in service. That was the last time I ever saw him.

During his basic training, I only ever received one phone call from him. And then…nothing. Radio silence. He never called me, so I tried calling his base. I couldn’t figure out how to operate the calling system to reach him, so I just hung up. So then I tried sending him a letter, and it got returned. Finally his mom told me he was being “recycled” because he was struggling in basic training and had to start the program over again, which meant he would be coming home for a while. She said he wanted to talk to me, so I tried texting him over and over. Never got a reply. My gut kept telling me something was wrong, that he was about to break up with me, but I refused to believe it. Then finally, after months of waiting I got a letter from him. It said:

“Dear Maddie,

I’m getting recycled and the process is taking longer than I thought. While in boot camp I have had a lot of time to think. I thought about us a lot. It’s hard for me to say but I don’t think we should see each other anymore. I’m sorry to have to say this but sometimes you have to let go in order to grow up. You're a great person and a wonderful girl and you’ll find someone special. Please don’t try to contact me because I’m not changing my mind.

Best of luck,

John”

I had to reread the letter multiple times to make sure I didn’t misread it or misunderstand it. But it just said the same thing over and over. The pain slowly set in as my mind processed. It was over. He’d broken up with me. He didn’t want me anymore. I’d just lost my beloved grandparents and my childhood dog. Now my boyfriend too. The next thing I knew I was bawling hysterically and running down the stairs for my mom’s comfort. Everything hurt as my heart that was already broken and bleeding shattered, especially my chest. I felt like I’d lost everything.

I spent the next 6 months feeling lost and mourning the future I’d thought I’d have and the guy I thought was the love of my life. I essentially went through the five stages of grief as I worked through the pain of my broken heart. At first I lived in denial, delusion even. I told myself and others that he didn’t mean it, that he’d been forced to write the letter by someone in boot camp as part of his military training to toughen him up. Then I was angry. I blamed the Navy for changing him and hated the military, until my dad told me that wasn’t how boot camp or military service worked. I was also mad at him and imagined ways I could get revenge, though I never acted on them. When I found out he was coming home and had dropped out of the Navy, I shifted into the bargaining phase. Now that his situation had changed, that would mean he was going to come back to me, right?! Yeah, that didn’t happen. I met up with a different mutual friend of ours who told me John had moved on with another girl. And that sent me right into the depression phase. I knew now that there was no going back to the way things were.

So I threw myself into my college life. I had already moved into an on-campus dorm that August, while I was still in the bargaining phase. When it became clear that John wasn’t coming back to me, I fully invested myself into making the most of my college freshman experience. I made new friends in a special program I was a part of specifically for autistic students, and got into D&D. I got involved in a political club. I explored my campus and the surrounding area, and learned new things from my classes. And I attended sessions with an on-campus counselor to help me work through all my grief. Plus I tried new things, like attending live sports (audio-sensory nightmare), going on a freshman retreat (that was pretty fun other than the stupid dances they tried to make us do at the “Barn Dance”), and exploring the monthly on-campus events our Student Activities Council put on (those were always fun, and I won I gift card in a raffle once!).

And slowly but surely, I healed. It was one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had, but thanks to the counselors at Xavier University, the love of my family and friends, and listening to break up songs (my favorite was Be Alright by Dean Lewis), I survived. One winter’s evening, I wrote up and printed out a letter to John cursing him out for the pain he’d inflicted upon me and telling him I never wanted to see him again. I mailed it out to him because I still had his home address, along with a cheap plastic ring he’d given me that I always wore and a personalized Swiss Army knife that I’d gotten him as a gift. I then blocked him and his mom’s phone numbers and their profiles on social media so he couldn’t reach out to me again. One of our mutual friends told me John was alarmed by the letter I sent him and wanted to talk to me, but I refused. He’d made his bed, now he had to lay in it. I wasn’t going to let him hurt me again.

Looking back on it now that I’m older and wiser, I can’t believe I was even in this relationship with John, much less for 3 whole years of my life. I missed so many red flags. For one thing, John was incredibly lazy. The reason why his grades were so low he couldn’t get into college? He never did his homework! He did all the classwork, tests and exams, but his mom and I could never persuade him to do his homework for some reason. And then he got all “shocked Pikachu face” when his grades weren’t good enough to get into any art programs so he could be an animator! Not to mention his only idea of a date was making out on his mom’s couch while we watched a crappy movie. All of our creative dates had to be planned and executed by me, and he’d expect me to pay for everything because he was that cheap. And he was a compulsive liar - he'd tell me all these ridiculous stories, like how a terrorist that used a van to run over some people on a bike line in Washington D.C. had been his neighbor. In high school, I developed what I now recognize was an eating disorder that involved binge-eating, feast-famine behavior and self-soothing with food, which caused me to gain a lot of weight over the years. Whenever I told John about my weight gain, his comments were judgmental rather than supportive. I understand he was probably worried about me, but it only made my disordered behaviors worse. He rarely ever complimented me anyways, I basically had to coerce him to tell me I was beautiful. He was even critical of my writing when I told him about a character for a story I was wanting to write, telling me this character was too much like me (which she was kinda based on me at the time, but not fully). All of his criticisms hurt my confidence. But the biggest issue in my mind was that towards the end of our relationship, it seemed like his love for me turned to into lust. All John would ever talk passionately about in our relationship was how he couldn’t wait to have sex with me when we were both in college, and how he pushed me to get an IUD so we could do it (which I did end up getting years later, but for health reasons, not for sex). I asked once if he only wanted me for sex, and he told me no, sex was a short term goal and marriage was his long term goal with me. But I didn’t fully believe him, I’m not sure why. Maybe my intuition somehow picked up cues that he may have been lying, or maybe there was something off in his tone that I only recognized subconsciously.

John’s friends weren’t exactly good people either. There was this one guy he would always sit with at lunch, Brian, who was a major asshole. He made fun of me for being a feminist and remained absolutely convinced that feminism was about hating men and was a cancer on society, no matter how much I tried to convince him otherwise. John never stood up for me. Brian asked me once what about problems women had in our modern world that needed to be fixed. I answered “rape culture” and he laughed at me. I got mad and stormed off, and John followed. I asked John why he didn’t stand me, and he said he “didn’t know what to say”. Literally anything would’ve worked! Not to mention Brain got suspended once, and John told me it was because he’d punched a girl in the stomach. I told John I felt that Brian deserved the punishment, and the first words out of his mouth were, “In his defense, the girl was being annoying”. As if that somehow justified assaulting her?!

I sometimes think about a discussion I had in my English class one year in high school, where my group was debating whether or not love makes you go crazy or unable to think clearly. At the time, I argued no because even though I was in love, I was capable of coherent thoughts and doing well in school. But these days, after what I went through dating John and the heartbreak that ensued, I would argue yes because of all the red flags I missed. There’s this quote I read from a screen capture of the show Bojack Horseman, which says something along the lines of “When you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, all of the red flags just look like flags”. That is honestly one of the realest things I’ve ever heard a fictional character say.

The only time I think back on that relationship now is when I ponder the “what-ifs”. Specifically the question, “If I had known back then what I know now, would I still have entered that relationship with John?” And the truth is, I don’t know. On one hand, if I’d known, I could’ve saved myself from heartbreak and waited for someone better. On the other hand, this relationship did give me some memories that I still treasure, like going to prom my senior year and that picnic we had at Smael Riverfront Park one nice summer evening to celebrate the anniversary of our relationship. And the lessons I learned from dating John helped me better understand what I’m looking for in a relationship and what I didn’t like or didn’t work so that I can choose better next time.

I still haven’t found a new partner yet, but it’s hard being a neurodivergent woman looking for love. I’ll talk about it more in my next post. But I haven’t given up, and I’m looking forward to seeing what my next love brings. Maybe this time will be the time I strike gold.