Three Months After my Father Died of Cancer, My Boyfriend Left me for Another Girl

My father was diagnosed with lung cancer in December 2015. The doctors did not give us much to hope for, and so a very difficult time began for me and my family. After many highs and lows, hoping, frustration and tears, almost two years after the diagnosis, my father finally gave up the fight a week before his 53rd birthday.

My ex and I had met in 2013, we quickly moved in together and had a pretty ordinary relationship I would say. He made me happy, he was my best friend and I could see myself marryng him one day. I thought he was the love of my life.
He was there that Christmas, when my father had not told us about him being sick yet, but was very obviously in huge pain as the cancer had already spread and started to eat up his hip bone.

What came next was not only a horrific time for me, but also for my ex. Of course he was not as close to my father, they barely even saw each other in the four years I had been with him, but it was tough for him because I feel like I had been a very shitty girlfriend during this time.

My thoughts mostly evolved around the awful situation my family was in and I started to take my relationship for granted and stopped putting in any kind of effort what so ever.

Now, three years later, I know that even though I was in love with my boyfriend, I never truly loved him. I always found a reason to be angry with him and unhappy with our relationship. Mostly because he was not spending as much time with me as I would have liked. But I also never accepted him the way he was. From my parents’ relationship and basically every other relationship I knew from my friends and movies, I had learned that it was normal to complain about each other and have fights over unimportant shit like who’s turn it was to put out the trash. And as a result of me not fully loving my ex, he looked for love elsewhere.

Despite of me realizing that, I want to say, the way he left me was terrible. Grieving my father, not sure how to piece myself back together, basically on the edge of a major depression, I received a text from him one night, telling me that he had wrote me a letter I should read. He had left it on his desk for me and it basically said, that he was not happy with me anymore and that he was ending things.

I was devastated. I was shocked. I just had not expected this to happen. After texting him a hundred messages and trying to call him for two hours he finally responded and told me that he would come over.
After keeping me waiting for another two hours, he told me that in his opinion enough time had passed after the death of my father and that he could not continue being with me.
My heart broke into a million pieces. I started shouting at him, I was mad and wanted to know what was going on. When I asked him for the third time, he admitted that he had met someone else.

It was terrible, but I want to stop blaming only him for ending our relationship. While my father was sick, he was there for me a lot. He even held a speech on my fathers funeral when neither me, my mother or brother could, he held my hand when we stepped into the hospital room where my dead father was lying.

Also, the more I was grieving, the harder it became for me to let him in. I didn’t really let him comfort me, as I thought he wouldn’t understand how I felt anyway. In a way, I think that I ended our relationship just as much as he did.

Long story short, I am really happy now and grateful that this breakup happened just after my father’s death. This heartbreak made me a better person in the end. I started to only do things that made me happy and started to focus on what I really wanted in life and who I wanted to be. Meditation helped me a lot to trust in myself again, also I had amazing friends who all helped me to get through this dark time. And I still believe that my father’s spirit guides me until today. One month after the breakup I booked the first flight I would take alone to California, and a few months after that I quit my job and finally started to travel the world, as I always had wanted. My life has really been magical ever since.

Along the way I met so many people who were more like me and lots of men who would all be a way better partner for me. And I started to learn how to truly love. Myself and others. I am a poor single and nobody likes me.