The opening lines of (500) Days of Summer are something that have stuck with me since my first viewing of the film, which came out in 2009. I can still hear the narrator’s voice, played by Richard McGonagle, booming in my mind as he said, “This is a story of boy meets girl. You should know up front, this is not a love story.”
I recently rewatched the film for the first time in years. And it hits differently when you’re going through a breakup. I spent a long time wondering if I would have changed the way my decade-long relationship unfolded if I had known upfront that “this is not a love story,” that it would inevitably end in heartbreak. That I would be left feeling like Carrie Bradshaw when her writer boyfriend, Jack Berger, broke up with her on a post-it note after he promised to try to make their relationship work.
Would I have been left with the modern equivalent of the Post-It note breakup? Initially, before agreeing to talk on the phone two days later (after I begged), my partner of the past ten years tried to break up with me through a text message.
For a few moments, I felt as if I were inside a Sex and the City episode. You know the one. The infamous Post-it note breakup—when Jack Berger tells Carrie Bradshaw, “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me,” on a Post-It note before disappearing from her life. What makes it sting isn’t just the method (though cowardice does deserve its own category of heartbreak), but what that paper represents: someone who couldn’t be honest with you until they were already gone.
While the show plays the breakup up for laughs, there’s something sobering about it all. Because the real kicker of the breakup isn’t just that he left, it’s that you were never worth the hard conversation. The ending didn’t just hurt. It made you feel disposable.
And maybe that’s what makes breakups like Berger’s (and mine) so hard to process: it’s not just the pain of it ending, it’s the method, the avoidance, the ease with which they walk away—like you were never really real to begin with.
He said, “I feel very guilty, and this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I feel hopeless about the chances of long-term happiness. … I’m very sorry for all this pain. I can’t talk anymore right now, it’s becoming too painful for me.”
I was left confused and second-guessing every single interaction we had ever had. I felt like Tom replaying every moment in my mind, as if it were shot on 35mm film. When did it all go so wrong? When did he stop loving me and start seeing me as his enemy? When did I stop reaching for our Eden? For that unattainable place of perfect connection within his heart, that always seemed to remain just out of reach?
We were having sex up until the night before he left. I’ll never forget how distant he was that night. He didn’t let me touch him, and I knew something was off. I knew something was amiss… and yet, I didn’t inquire. I was afraid to know. I was afraid to have another argument.
And now, as I sit here in the lobby of some office building near Central Park, waiting to meet my dozenth first date since the split, filled with regret. I wish we had fought, really fought. Because our lack of arguments led to a lack of passion, and that lack of passion seemed to be missing since after our first year and a half together.
So then why did we stay?! Part of it was that there was so much life happening. His Mother was dying, I was depressed, he was trying desperately to be an entrepreneur, we were living with his parents in a pressure cooker doomed to burst or swallow us whole… There was so much pressure on both of us. And yet, we stayed. It was comfortable. He was my best friend. And I honestly thought he was my person… but maybe, all this time, I wasn’t his.
It’s a jarring moment… looking back now, I realize I was “love blind”—blinded by my narrative of what we were, what we could become, what I wanted so badly to believe—looking back on ten years of waiting, hoping, gently pushing, and asking the person I loved to talk to me about our future. About marriage. About us.
And when I finally got my answer—after he secretly started therapy without telling me (therapy I had begged him to pursue for years)—the truth came out: he didn’t want to get married to anyone.
Except… the question that keeps clawing at me in the quiet moments is: Was it really anyone? Or just me?
I now wonder if he always knew—deep down—that he didn’t see me as the one. But he didn’t want to be the bad guy. So instead, he strung me along, delaying the inevitable, convincing both of us that we were still building something real.
Like how Carrie accuses Berger of trying too hard not to be the bad guy, that hits hard. Because often, when someone is more concerned with how they’ll be perceived than how they treat you, they choose the path of least resistance. A Post-it note. Silence. A half-hearted explanation, months (in my case, years) too late. It’s not just about ending the relationship. It’s about choosing self-preservation over your partner’s dignity.
He insisted it was “a compatibility issue”. And maybe it was. We are two very different people, and yet somehow, we were two very different, very lost people who navigated life together during a time when we both really needed someone. And now I am trying to navigate life as myself, again.
A friend once told me that the minute someone breaks up with you, one of the first things you try to do is reclaim your dignity. And sometimes you go about it in very undignified ways. I tried really hard to resist my old pattern of becoming infatuated with someone else. But it proved to be extremely difficult.
I wound up sleeping with a friend I had been crushing on… and then I briefly saw a Dom. I enjoyed the fantasy without the need to be vulnerable. It was a distraction from the need to process the mess of emotions swelling up inside me. The instant gratification of having somebody versus somebody. Though it did make me wonder… had I done that with my ex? And if I had, would I even realize it?
Upon reflection, I don’t believe I did, at least not initially or consciously. I met him during an extraordinary time in my life. My younger brother had a series of suicide attempts, which resulted in my returning to the house that never truly felt like a home. And when he stabilized and went off to college, I felt empty. Lonely.
And that nagging feeling I was always running from, loneliness, hung heavy. So I ran. I tried to find comfort in another, but a specific kind of comfort. I wanted someone who had stared into the same dark abyss, unflinching. Someone who understood my pain and could hold space for it. Enter, my Ex.
At the time, his Mom was dying of cancer, we had a similar amount of profound loss, and we both wanted more for our lives. So it worked… until, it didn’t. And when it didn’t, I tried to ignore it. To pretend that the pieces still fit together. And I kept doing that until he decided to leave.
It’s only now that I realize how often I accepted crumbs and called it a feast. I clung to hope. I wrote off the silence. I thought I was being patient, but really, I was just afraid to look again.
The Post-it note is painful because it serves as a metaphor. Not just for how someone leaves, but for how little effort they’re willing to put in—whether it’s ending a relationship or nurturing one. It’s what you leave behind when you’ve already emotionally exited.
If I learned anything from Sex and the City and 500 Days of Summer, it’s this: clarity doesn’t always arrive in the moment. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes years. But one day, you’ll look back—not just at the good stuff, but at the whole picture. And you’ll realize the relationship didn’t fail all at once. It failed slowly, with every avoided conversation, every unanswered question, every time you chose to believe in potential instead of reality.
And when you do finally see clearly, you’ll understand that a Post-it note or a whispered “I just knew”—it was never about you being unlovable. It was about them not being capable of loving you the way you deserved.
So now I’m sitting here (officially stood up by first date #12), staring into the abyss and wanting someone to reach out.
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