

I read the responses late at night, after he had fallen asleep. I was terrified of what I would find, and with the first sentence of the first reply, I struggled to breathe. I was shaking and crying and some of the advice was so brutally honest that it felt like I was being punched in the stomach. But I read, and reread, and read again. Every comment, every favorite, was one more voice added to the chorus. And soon, that little feeling inside of me couldn’t be ignored, and I knew what I had to do. I left a browser tab with my question open on my phone for a few days while I processed what was happening, because it made me feel like you were all there with me, telling me it would be okay.



Breaking up with him was the most horrible thing I have ever done to another person, but I realize, and I hope he will too, eventually, that it was better now than ten years on. If I already was lying to him about my feelings before marriage, then I would have lied saying my vows. I think it will affect me, though, the rest of my days. And as he kept asking me if I was sure, I wanted so desperately to say that I was wrong and this was a mistake, but each time that I told him that I couldn’t keep trying, I felt more and more free.



The guilt still wracks me. Sometimes I want to take it all back, and make him happy once more, but then I read your responses and remember. Everything was so true and cut to the bone - the emotional labor, the lack of chemistry, the gentle encouragement that it was okay to want more, the reminder that it was my life alone, the voices from a future version of myself, the last comment about the assumption of depression if you are a woman and don’t want to be married - it was all true, and kind. So very very kind.



I had my first session with a therapist. She echoed what so many of you said, and she congratulated me, because many of her clients are women who married and had children, and they tell her now they should have listened to the little voice, before the wedding. She told me she thinks I have many changes ahead of me, and I may live an unconventional life, but it is my life, and mine alone.



I still have to disentangle our lives, from the shared home to the emergency contact lists. Slowly, I have to undo eight years of planning. I am scared. The loneliness suffocates, sometimes when I least expect it. But, for the first time in years, I have hope. I have my whole life ahead of me. It won’t be as I had planned, but it’s mine, and I’ll make it good.



Thank you, all of you. You changed my life. Without you, I would have been one of the commenters, ten years down the road, warning a future version of myself, and even more deeply damaging two people, if not more, in the meantime. Thank you, thank you, over and over and over, to all of you in this community. I will carry your thoughts with me for the rest of my life.

I was this anonymous poster . I wrote it on Thanksgiving, heartsick and sad and deeply deeply unhappy, but certain the problems were my own. I sent it out to the ether of the anonymous queue, and immediately, I felt a weight lifted. These wonderful, sharp minds, I thought, can help me, when I can’t help myself.