Discovering True Happiness Beyond Relationships: My Personal Journey

This is not a sad story anymore, though it used to be. It’s my proof. It’s the before and after etched into my life. And it starts with a three-year relationship that felt both endless and over in a blink.

It was a whirlwind. The kind of fast where you don’t stop to ask if you should, you just do. We moved in together quickly, our lives merging into one drawer, one bathroom sink, one shared toothbrush holder, before we even truly knew the people we were merging with. It was a union, a promise, a Pacte civil de solidarité (PACS). It was serious, with all the weight of a marriage, with the promise that the real paper would come later.

It ended almost as abruptly as it began. We met in a February (2020), and three Februaries later, he was the one to end it. He said he was carrying the relationship on his back. And I remember the shock of that, the sheer absurdity of the statement, because I knew, in my bones, who had been doing the heavy lifting. I knew whose shoulders were sore from the weight.

The truth, the one I whisper to myself now, is that it should have ended long before. There was a May, May of 2020, where he crossed a line that should have been indelible. But I… I forgave him. Then, there was a September that should have been the final, definitive full stop. And I turned it into a semicolon. I just kept going.

I’ve asked myself why a thousand times. And the answer is both simple and deeply conditioned: I genuinely believed that being in a relationship - any relationship - was essential to being a woman who had "made it." I was taught that our ultimate validation comes from being chosen, from having a partner, even if the partnership is a cage. The fear of being alone in the world was far greater than the pain of staying in a life that was making me small. So I lived for two. I sacrificed for someone who wasn't even watching.

But then, it ended. And in the heartbreaking silence that followed, I did the bravest thing I’ve ever done: I left. I literally packed my things and bought a one-way ticket to Greece.

And here is the part that still astonishes me: less than two weeks after he ended it, he was running after me. Calling, messaging, backtracking. But the most incredible thing had already happened.

In those two weeks, I had already caught a glimpse of myself again. In the solitude of my own company, in the fierce independence of navigating a foreign country completely alone, I felt a flicker. And then a flame. I was happier. More alive. More me than I had been in years. That glimpse of happiness, that proof of life after us, became my power. It was the ultimate clarity. It gave me the unshakable strength to not just walk away, but to close the door completely and throw away the key. How could I ever go back to dimming my own light after I’d finally seen it shine so brightly on its own?

Greece was my awakening. Solitude was my liberation. I was single, alone, and I have never felt more loved - because I was finally the one doing the loving. I made deep, effortless friendships. I wasn’t looking for a man, but I was open to connection, and I found a wonderful one. But the man wasn't the point. The point was that for the first time, my world did not orbit around the idea of romantic love.

I had de-centered it.

We talk about de-centering men, and that’s a part of it. But the real revolution is de-centering the entire narrative of romantic love as our primary purpose. Realizing that no one is a failure for not being in a relationship; in fact, choosing yourself over a bad relationship is the highest form of success. So many relationships I see are held together by the sheer will of an overburdened, desperate woman. We are taught to place our desires after those of our partners, our children, our parents. We are always last.

To choose ourselves is a radical act.

I read something by Marcela Ceribelli that put words to this feeling:

“The hierarchy we give to romantic love is not just cultural; it is a device of control... From an early age, everything around us convinces us that our greatest achievement is not in who we are, but in the fact that someone desires us... Love is sold as a passport to completeness, but for many women, it becomes a state of eternal anxiety.”

That narrative is what keeps us in unequal, draining relationships. We stay for the story. We tolerate the pain for the plot.

But when I decided that my life would be about my own completeness, everything changed. I don’t do anything anymore that isn’t for my own well-being. That relationship was draining, a constant sacrifice. I worked day and night for it, not for me.

Now, my life is for me. And that simple, revolutionary shift is why everything else - my friendships, my work, my peace - finally works. They are built on the real, whole me, not on the version of me I thought I had to be for a love story.

I believe in love. But I believe in me more. And that has made all the difference.