To the Me Who Held On While She Let Go
Dear Adulting Me,
Welcome to the real world! Or so they say...
You finally have what you used to dream about—your own place with Sam. No more sneaking around, no more curfews. Just the two of you, waking up together, falling asleep to the sound of her breathing, building a life that is supposed to be yours together.
And for a while, it feels right. You still have your late night talks, your morning coffee, your quiet moments where everything feels like home. You learn the rhythm of each other’s schedules, how to exist in the same space without stepping on each other’s toes. It’s not perfect, but it’s yours.
Then, little things start to change. She sleeps later than she used to, chasing something. An idea, an impulse, something she can’t name. You remind her to eat when she forgets. She reminds you to stop working when you get lost in your laptop. At first, it’s balance. At first, it’s love.
But love shouldn’t feel this tiring, should it?
You don’t say anything. You don’t want to be the one who makes problems out of nothing. So you swallow the sighs, the frustration, the loneliness that creeps in even when she’s right there. You tell yourself it’s just stress, just life.
But then one night, you wake up, and she’s not beside you. She’s in the living room, staring out the window, lost in thought. When you call her name, she smiles at you like nothing’s wrong.
And that’s when you realize, maybe this is what growing apart feels like.
With hope and hesitation,
Jules
Dear Adulting Me,
You always thought love would be the easiest part. That no matter how tired, how busy, how messy life got, love would carry you through. And maybe, for a time, it does.
But now, love feels like something you have to schedule. Something you remind each other of between work, errands, and exhaustion. You used to talk about the future with excitement but now, it feels like a conversation you both avoid.
You tell yourself it’s normal. This is what happens when you grow up, right? Passion turns into stability, wild love into quiet comfort. You adjust, you compromise, you make space for each other in ways that don’t feel as effortless as before.
But here’s what no one warned you about: sometimes, in making space for someone else, you lose space for yourself.
You start measuring your words, filtering your thoughts, keeping some things to yourself because you don’t want to start a fight. And Sam—Sam does the same. You both smile through the exhaustion, through the quiet tension, pretending not to notice that something feels different.
Then one evening, she surprises you with takeout from your favorite place. You sit together, eating in silence, the food tasting exactly the same as it always has but everything else feels different.
You still love her. She still loves you. But Jules, when did love start feeling like something you have to hold together with both hands, afraid that if you let go, even for a second, it might slip through your fingers?
With a heart full of questions,
Jules
Dear Adulting Me,
You tell yourself it’s just a rough patch. That love like yours doesn’t just fade. So you try harder. You make plans, you hold her hand more often, you laugh at her jokes even when you don’t feel like laughing.
Some days, it works. Some days, you catch glimpses of what you used to be—the effortless rhythm, the way you could look at each other and just know. You cling to those moments, convincing yourself they mean things will be okay.
But then there are the other days.
Days when silence stretches between you at the dinner table. When conversations feel like small talk instead of something real. When she hesitates before answering you, like she’s deciding how much of the truth to tell.
You hate those days.
Because on those days, you realize love isn’t the problem. Love is still there. But love isn’t fixing things the way you thought it would.
And Jules, what happens when you love someone with everything you have, but it still isn’t enough to keep them close?
With hands that are holding on, but starting to slip,
Jules
Dear Adulting Me,
You’ve always been the one who believed in effort, in showing up, in doing the work. Love, to you, has never been about grand gestures. It’s in the small things. Waking up early to make her coffee, picking up her favorite snacks on your way home, learning to love the songs she plays on repeat.
You thought that if you just tried hard enough, you could hold everything together.
But what if love isn’t about holding on tighter? What if it’s about knowing when to loosen your grip?
She’s restless in a way you can’t soothe. You see it in the way her eyes drift to the horizon, in how she lingers when she talks about places she’s never been, things she hasn’t done. She loves you, Jules, but she is looking for something she doesn’t even have the words for yet.
And you’re terrified that the more you try to keep her here, the more you’ll make her want to leave.
So what do you do? Do you fight for this? Do you let her go? And how do you know which one is the right choice?
With a heart that doesn’t know what to do,
Jules
Dear Adulting Me,
You knew this moment would come, didn’t you? Maybe not in the way it’s happening, not in the quiet unraveling of all the things you built together, but in the way love has started to feel more like effort than instinct.
You tried. God, did you try.
But love is not a lifeline. It cannot be the thing that holds two people together when the rest of their worlds are pulling them apart.
You love her, still. You always will. But the version of love you’re clinging to is one that exists in the past, not in the present.
And that’s the hardest thing to accept, isn’t it? That love doesn’t always mean staying. That sometimes, the kindest thing you can do for someone is to let them go.
It won’t be dramatic. There won’t be screaming or ultimatums. It will be quiet. A conversation spoken in exhausted truths, an understanding that you both deserve a love that doesn’t feel like trying to outrun an inevitable ending.
And when you walk away, it will feel like you’re leaving behind a part of yourself. Maybe you are.
But, Jules, even if you knew how it would end, you would still choose her.
Because love was never supposed to be about holding on for dear life. It was about experiencing something real, even if it couldn’t last forever.
With a heart that finally understands,
Jules