Ladies, why do we do this to ourselves? An open letter to my F*** Buddy.

Ladies, have you ever done everything right in a situation for it to still go wrong? Pour your heart out for someone who is reciprocating, but will switch up in an instant to make you feel crazy? They love on you, compliment you, sex you crazy, hold you tight at night, share private moments with you, but won’t commit? Have you put them first completely and felt so stupid? Ever sat by the phone for hours waiting hopelessly for that text or call? I know women that have move to a new state, where they didn’t know a soul, all for the sake of putting their “man’s” feelings and pleasures before your own. We lose so much because we care too much.

Listen... If you’ve ever fallen for a friend that didn’t love you back, or fell for your fuck buddy, you know what it's like to take an L. Period. Let me be the first to scream, “it fucking SUCKS.” As a woman, you go through so much and put up with so much from a man just to get him to understand how much you care for him. Brandy said it best, “have you ever loved somebody so much it makes you cry?” I promise you; every woman has. In order to save yourself from heartache, learn from my mistakes. He’ll play games with you, play with your emotions, make you feel crazy, and you will still lose in the end. I penned my emotions to try to pick up the pieces of my heart. Walk with me and relive the moment I got my heart stepped on by someone I wasn’t supposed to fall for in the first damn place. Raw and uncut:

I have so many emotions. I don’t even know how to organize them. I saw you outside swiping on Tinder and it made me realize that I now feel as though my feelings are in too deep, and deep alone. I thought that we were in a space where we both were really beginning to develop feelings for each other. I’ve always known from the beginning that he said he’d see other people, but I don’t know why it's affecting me now. I think it's... I don’t know what it is. I want to talk to him, but what would I say? What would it matter? What do I want to get out of talking? What do I want to know that I didn’t know already? What would I say to him?

Can we talk?

I’ve been crying for four days straight in silence. Seeing you swipe on Tinder while I sat working and planning a day of celebration for you to celebrate your new job offer, a feeling of discouragement and disappointment came over me. Was I really seeing that? Was that really happening? I couldn’t believe my eyes and suddenly they began to well with tears. It was then that I knew, you didn’t love me like I had fallen in love with you. I was in love alone. Heartbreak and being in love alone: feelings I wouldn’t wish upon even the coldest soul.

We’d been spending so much time together, getting closer and closer, and I thought just maybe we’d just unlocked a new level to our relationship. The constant laughs. Waking up to your face more and more every day as the weeks went by. Seeing you get more comfortable with me; being by your side when yet another storm hit, and you lost your job. You began opening to me more about your family and private things; I felt honored that you finally began sharing these with me. I thought, maybe, just maybe we were getting somewhere.

I share my feelings with you constantly when I’m overwhelmed with emotion. You always just danced around them, and I never understood why. “You’re so smitten with me and it's just disgusting,” you joked that morning moments before you went outside to explore Tinder. It was then that these moments became clearer to me, understanding why you avoided conversations about how I feel about you and what you meant to me.

I’d become so blinded by love, so caught up in the indescribable moments and time we spent together that I forgot. I had fallen in love with the way you began showing your affection toward me, that I lost sight of you “always dating other women” because the connection, the time spent, the sole undivided attention you showed me made feel like you were who I wanted; like with your gaslight hints, you wanted me too. You weren’t necessarily looking for anything else because what we had was cool.

But still, Tinder was calling. What sucks is that I know you have some type of feelings for me because you felt as though you had to be sneaking. You removed yourself from the room, went outside and hesitated as I watched you from behind the glass from the kitchen. You slightly looked over your shoulder to watch me in the house as if you knew you didn’t want me to see you. If we were just friends, if there was nothing between us, why sneak?

As I realized that day, I was in love alone, I didn’t know what to do. Do I stop seeing you altogether? Do I constantly remind myself this is what I signed up for? Do I come to terms with the fact that I’ll never truly have you? Together or not, I’ll never truly have you. You’ll always seek someone or something else. When I knew who you were when we say and talked about casual dating, neither of us knew it would get as far as it did, or that neither one of us would catch feelings – which we both did! What do I do? The pain of losing you is just as great of that of watching you on Tinder.

Hearing the sound notification when we hung out for the first time since I’ve cried every day for those four days. What do I do? I'm leaving.

Let me be honest with myself. I’ll be right back in your bed tomorrow.