Red Flags: Broken Promises

As the year comes to a close, I'll be doing a short blog series on red flags I've encountered in the past and what to avoid in the future. This is the second of that series: broken promises.

I was with my first ever boyfriend from mid-2012 to late-2019... about 7 years. If that seems long, it is. When we first started dating, I told myself that if I didn't get proposed to by our 5th anniversary, I would end things between us. I didn't. And that was the biggest promise I broke to myself.

Holding hands with a skeleton, the day before we broke up for good in 2019. That's how dead our relationship was to me.

Why?

Growing up, I saw people get engaged and married for some pretty poor reasons. However, growing up in the church taught me to take time getting to really know a person before dating (or what they liked to think of a courting) a person. I had been friends with my boyfriend for about a year before he asked me to be his girlfriend. I thought I knew him well. I didn't.... or more like he changed when we started dating.

While I originally saw myself dying alone because of my independence, I told myself when we got together that if he didn't propose by year 5, I'd end the relationship. I figured that 5 years would be long enough for us to really get to know each other and know whether or not we wanted to be together forever. I didn't want to be one of those couples together for over a decade with no formal commitment.

By the time our fifth anniversary came around, it was 2017. I had just finished college and a year of teacher training, moving on to my first formal job as a high school English teacher. My boyfriend was finishing his third year of community college. He had failed the same introductory computer science course for the third time and was working at a Tutti Frutti. Obviously, one of us was making more progress in life than the other. I knew he was having a difficult time in college, so I decided to be patient and do what he had often asked me: wait for him to get his life together before he could propose.

He made this argument every time I talked about how long we had been dating and wanted to move forward. Honestly, I wish I would have realized this promise was false as fuck early on. It was a big waste of time. If it wasn't his family or his strict mom, it was school, work, his emotional issues, or his lack of rest. There was always some excuse for why he couldn't get his life together. I always fell for it, acting as an advisor for his educational goals, advocating for him to get better jobs, or giving him a safe space to relax while we were together, pushing my own needs aside.

When we broke up and I heard from other people that he moved on with someone else and finally passed the courses he couldn't even get into when we were together, my deep down knowledge was solidified. He didn't love me. He never loved me. He never got his life together because he didn't love me. After I ended things, he finally progressed in life, knowing what I struggled with: it took breaking me to fix him. This would be the first and last time I make excuses for someone not wanting to commit to me. Next time, I would not be as patient because I knew the consequences.

Promises

While this was the biggest promise I broke to myself, our relationship consisted of many many broken promises between myself and him and just myself in general. He promised me a lot of things that never came to fruition: living together, moving away to a large city away from his family, him taking care of me when he had a lot of money to make up for all the school tuition and money I loaned him while I was in college, and sillier things like a bulldog, Comic-Con, and a trip to Hawaii. I promised myself that he would make his promises reality, and I promised my patience was that of a worthy future wife. I promised to wait for him, staying in our hometown until I turned 24 and could no longer survive there. I left California to attend grad school in Minnesota, promising to come back for him or pave a way for him to join me in my midwest paradise on Lake Bemidji. All broken promises, all wastes of my time, money, and energy.

By the end of the relationship I no longer trusted him or myself. I ended things because he was unwilling to give me space to catch up on work for the one day I requested a break from constant texting. It ended in a fake suicide attempt while I was on the phone with him, pleading for more time to finish my homework without him acting like it was the end of the world. After the phone call, he asked if I loved him still. I said I did. He asked me to say the words. I love you... I said. We hung up, but that was when I knew it was over. I didn't love him after that. How could I? And I knew he never loved me, he just wanted to control me. It was the last broken promise I would make to him.

Over the next couple of months, he would continually try to win me back with more broken promises. He disappeared from his home, promising to drive from California to Minnesota to find me. He didn't make it past Las Vegas. He made a new account on Instagram to tell me he made it to Minnesota and had down-payments on a ring that December. That was also a lie. He begged me to get back together, saying he was ready for marriage and he'd get therapy to never scare me again. It was all lies. I would no longer fall for his bullshit. It took some time before he stopped stalking me online and creating new accounts to try and talk to me. Eventually, it did end though. Thank God it did. It had made my 2019 and 2020 a living Hell.

Red Flags

If I could go back and talk to my younger self, I'd tell her to end things sooner. I'd tell her to stop being overly patient and taken advantage of. I'd tell her to stick to her goals and promises to herself, then the right guy would work within those parameters no matter what. No more excuses. No more broken promises. I'd save that wasted time for someone who wouldn't waste it.

While I know this current relationship won't end in marriage, we were honest and open about that from the beginning. I knew he didn't believe in a piece of paper and didn't want kids. He knew I wanted to get as far away from Fargo as possible. No broken promises, just honesty. We've been together now for almost 2 years, knowing how this will end, but making every moment count. I can't remember a single promise he has broken with me. My trust in him is infinitely more, knowing we talk about everything and there's no reason to make up for anything. He's helped restore my faith in men. And I hope my next relationship after this will mirror it. Broken promises for long times that I've endured shall not be endured again.

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