An open letter to the broke, exhausted, academically ambitious fool financing a man-child.
Dear 22-year-old Erika,
First of all, congratulations. You’ve hit rock bottom, and for a moment there, you genuinely mistook it for a foundation. Precious. You, living off a fragile little scholarship like it was the GDP of a small Balkan republic. You, scheduling your crying around his naps and endless gaming marathons. You, writing essays on the fall of empires and the cyclical nature of human suffering, all while dating the human equivalent of a forgotten side quest—no goals, no impact, and entirely skippable.
Let me get this straight. You were studying full-time—two colleges, no less—cooking meals out of vegetables his mother grew out of pity, and still managing to financially support a man whose primary ambition was “grinding for legendary gear” in Diablo. Who among us hasn’t spent their early twenties funding a boyfriend’s nicotine habit and pretending it’s a love language?
Oh, right—healthy people.
You tried, though. You really did. You poured six years of your youth—your glowing, feral, should’ve-been-kissed-in-Paris years—into a man who thought “personal growth” was downloading a new game on Steam. Every time you brought up the terrifying subject of “the future,” he blinked slowly like a lizard under a heat lamp and mumbled something about “all will be well.”
Of course it wasn’t. He didn’t have a job—not then, not ever, unless you count endless clicking through Diablo dungeons as career development. But he always said he would get one. Just not this week. Or next. And yet there you were—mopping up the emotional residue, shopping with exact change, and telling yourself, “But he’s just in a rough patch right now.”
Girl, that patch had a zip code.
You remember that week you couldn’t afford groceries, so you ate rice and mustard for four days straight while he procrastinated? Yeah. I do. We all do. The ancestors felt it. They almost reincarnated you as a cordless iron just so you’d finally have some heat in your life.
But I get it. You didn’t leave because you thought it was your fault. You thought you weren’t supportive enough. That maybe if you just held on longer, worked harder, stretched yourself thinner, he’d finally become the person you believed he could be. Maybe if you had more sex, or less sex, or dirtier sex, or had been born as someone less chronically tired from carrying a relationship on your back like a mule, he’d finally get his act together.
Spoiler: he didn’t.
He’s married now. With two kids. Wild, right? Somewhere out there, a woman is voluntarily doing what you barely survived—except now it’s with toddlers, unpaid bills, and probably the same cloud of smoke wafting through their living room. He’s likely still explaining how “the system” is why he hasn’t updated his CV since 2012, while she quietly wonders if this is what her horoscope meant by “challenging partnerships.” The only system that truly failed was the one that let this man coast through life with nothing but unwashed laundry, a martyr complex, and unsolicited takes on the goddamn Diablo.
Meanwhile, here’s what you missed while you were busy gaslighting yourself into believing “at least he doesn’t cheat” was a win: real life was waiting. And oh boy, does it look different now.
You’re 32 now. Married. Yes, married—voluntarily! To someone who actually listens when you talk. You have a daughter who once wiped her oatmeal-covered face on every clean surface on the table, looked up at you with no warning or reason, and said, “Mommy, I love you so much.” And you melted. Right there, next to a half-eaten banana she didn’t finish so you thought – “Why not?” You own a house. You have three cats, one of whom might be plotting your downfall but in a charming, whimsical villain kind of way. You eat home cooked meals. You exercise. You and your husband take turns parenting like it’s a team sport, not a punishment handed out for having ovaries.
You have peace, 22-year-old Erika. Not the scary, “Am I dying?” kind of peace that happens right before a breakup, but the kind where no one is gaming twelve hours a day while you spiral into Google searches like “Is it emotional abuse if he never gets a job?”
You sleep now. On sheets that aren’t stained with hot sauce and existential dread. You have sex that doesn’t make you want to file a noise complaint against yourself for fake moaning out of sheer politeness.
And yet—I know what you’re thinking.
Why did it take so long?
Why did you waste six years dragging a man-child up the hill of ambition only for him to slide back down into a beanbag chair and blame “the universe”?
Because you were scared. Scared of being alone. Scared of starting over. Scared that maybe, just maybe, this was the best you’d ever get. After all, he wasn’t mean—he just wasn’t… anything. He was a non-event dressed as a boyfriend. A placeholder with a pulse.
But fear is a master manipulator. It will have you believing that “at least he doesn’t hit me” is a benchmark and not a bare-minimum requirement. That being alone is worse than being with someone who sees your ambition as “a bit much.”
You weren’t weak. You were conditioned. Conditioned to shrink. To please. To compromise yourself down to the size of a girlfriend-shaped doormat. But when you finally, finally left—that wasn’t weakness unraveling. That was your spine growing back.
So thank you. Thank you for finally waking up one warm Tuesday morning and realizing that being alone is better than being slowly, systematically erased by someone who thinks “emotional depth” means talking about his dreams of becoming a BitCoin millionaire at 35.
Thank you for packing your things, even if it wasn’t much. Thank you for choosing solitude over slow self-annihilation.
You were right to be scared. But you were even more right to walk away.
And no, you didn’t waste six years. You built a PhD in red flags. You now have an emotional bullshit detector so strong it could spot a man-child through a dating app and a lead wall.
You made it.
And next time someone says “But he was nice,” you can say, “So is my cat. And he doesn’t expect me to fund his lifestyle while he stares blankly at loading screens.”
Love,
Erika (32, tired but gloriously free)
P.S. You were right. The sex was bad.
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