Writing not smoking

Today, I put my foot down. I asked my boyfriend to move out of my apartment. I packed up everything that belonged to him and placed it neatly by the door for him to collect in the morning.

I am done.

Of course, we’ll still need to co-parent. I won’t stand in the way of him showing up for his child – if he puts in the effort, gets a job, and proves he’s capable. But right now, I’m finally putting my boundaries in place.

It’s something I thought I’d mastered but clearly hadn’t. Once again, I was caught in the loop of love addiction.

And I can’t even blame him fully. I’m the one who worked five jobs to save the cash to get here. I’m the one who paid eight months’ rent in advance to secure a flat and asked him to “pay rent” through food and cleaning. I’m the one who signed my name on every contract to finance our so-called “perfect” relationship container, all in the naïve hope he would value me the way I valued him. But people are not our expectations. Love and respect cannot be bought. I’ve always known that, but today I learned it the hard way – like a bucket of cold water to the face.

For years, I muddied my own waters with substance abuse. He’ll say I’m scapegoating weed to justify cruelty. But whatever the “truth” is, I feel clearer than ever. I carried an unemployed 31-year-old man for nearly two years while he bunked uni and spent my money on weed, popcorn, and groceries that rotted in the fridge before being touched.

I’ve broken up with him what feels like fifteen times this week alone. Each time, he discounted my words: “you’re hormonal,” “you’re impulsive,” “you don’t know what you’re thinking.” Mansplaining at its worst – from a man who parrots feminist lectures back at me as though he himself were a repressed woman.

What gave me strength today was coffee with a friend, the child of divorced parents. She laid out a framework: “If he can’t accept your no’s, if he keeps talking when you ask for silence, if he circles back to old arguments – you don’t have to dump him, but you must respond with love. If his response is petulance, let him be petulant and go look after yourself.”

The final straw came when he chose to play devil’s advocate for a professional refusing to refund me – money she had spent on a cinema-screen TV and a brand-new oven she had the cheek to ask for help in unpacking. He argued she was a struggling psychologist who didn’t need more stress. I argued I was a pregnant single mother, needing every penny back to rent a place for us to live. Services unprovided = malpractice.

And boy, he was petulant. I asked him plainly: could he keep the peace, as he’d promised, for the remainder of my time here? Or would it be better if I packed up his things and created space? I needed calm for the sake of my pregnancy. He needed distance from my bluntness.

There are so many good things I could list about the father of my child. I’ll write those down tomorrow, after I’ve cried myself to sleep. For tonight, I am tired. So tired. Bone-tired.

But I take accountability: I let this all happen. I walked in with no suspicions. Naïve, at best.

For now, I am sober, pregnant, and finished with all men. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll feel capable of stringing my thoughts into something gentler. But tonight, this is enough.