I was washing dishes when my girlfriend, Valerie, started her usual routine. The trigger this time? I’d bought the wrong brand of oat milk.
“Seriously, Donovan?” she sighed. “I specifically said the Barista Blend. This is regular.”
“They were out of Barista,” I said. “This works fine.”
“This is exactly the problem! You never listen!”
“It’s oat milk, Val. It’ll taste the same in your coffee.”
“It’s not about the milk!” she snapped. “It’s about you not caring about my needs!”
Here we go. The spiral from a minor inconvenience to a relationship referendum. “I drove to three stores looking for your specific brand.”
“And you gave up. Like you always do. A real boyfriend would have found it.”
I kept washing dishes. This was her pattern. Small issue becomes huge fight. Fight becomes threat.
“You know what?” she said, her voice rising. “I’m done. I could leave you anytime. Remember that?”
There it was. Her favorite card. The threat she played at least twice a month.
“Noted,” I said calmly.
“That’s it? ‘Noted’?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to care that I might leave!”
“You threaten to leave every time we disagree about coffee creamer, about what to watch, about which way the toilet paper should hang.”
“Because you don’t appreciate me! Do you know how many guys want me?”
“The same ones you text when you’re mad at me,” I replied without turning around.
She froze. Yeah, I knew about those—the emotional support orbiters she kept on standby.
“How dare you go through my phone?”
“I haven’t,” I said. “You leave your Instagram open on my laptop.”
“Those are just friends!”
“Friends who send heart emojis at 2 a.m.? At least they appreciate me. I could be with any of them tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all? You’d just let me go?”
“You said you could leave anytime,” I said, finally turning to face her. “I’m acknowledging that.”
She stomped to the bedroom and slammed the door. Standard procedure. Usually, I’d apologize within an hour, promise to do better, maybe order her favorite Thai food. Not today.
Instead, I finished the dishes, made a cup of coffee with the wrong oat milk—it tasted fine—and then I made a call.
“Hey, Rasheed,” I said into the phone. “You still looking for a roommate?”
Update One: One Week Later
The plan unfolded beautifully.
Day One: Valerie emerged from the bedroom expecting the usual apology ritual. She found me working on my laptop.
“So,” she said, tapping her foot. “Anything to say?”
“Good morning to you, too.”
“That’s it? No apology?”
“For what? Dismissing your feelings? I acknowledged your feelings. You could leave anytime, remember?”
She stared, confused. This wasn’t the script. She flounced off and posted a cryptic Instagram story about “knowing your worth.”
Day Two: I started Phase One: apartment hunting. Not for me—for her. I found a studio in her price range: $650 a month, rough neighborhood, but available immediately. I sent her the listing.
Her text back was immediate: What’s this?
Me: An affordable option for when you leave. Being helpful.
Her: Are you kicking me out?
Me: No. You said you could leave anytime. I’m facilitating.
Her: This place is a DUMP.
Me: It’s what $650 gets you. Your budget, right?
Her: You know I can’t afford my own place!
Me: Then maybe stop threatening to leave.
Radio silence for three hours.
Day Three: The love-bombing began. I woke up to her making actual breakfast for the first time in a year. “Thought you’d like a nice breakfast,” she cooed.
“Thanks. Very thoughtful.”
“Maybe we could spend the day together, like old times?”
“Can’t. Helping Rasheed move some furniture.”
“Rasheed? Since when are you friends?”
“Since he might need a roommate.”
Her face went pale. “You’re… you’re not moving in with Rasheed?”
“Not me. But I know someone who might need a place soon. Someone who could leave anytime.”
She didn’t threaten to leave for the rest of the week.
Day Five: She tried recruiting allies. Her best friend, Camila, called me. “What are you doing to Val? She’s freaking out!”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just taking her seriously.”
“About what?”
“She says she could leave anytime. I’m helping her explore her options.”
“You know she doesn’t mean it!”
“Then why does she say it constantly?”
“It’s just how she expresses frustration!”
“By threatening our relationship? Cool communication style.”
Day Seven: The real panic set in. I found her on rental websites. “Everything’s so expensive!” she wailed.
“Yeah, housing costs are rough.”
“How am I supposed to afford $1,500 for a decent place?”
“Roommates,” I suggested. “A second job. Those guys in your DMs.”
She slammed the laptop shut. “This is abusive! You’re financially abusing me!”
“I’m showing you apartments. You’re the one who wants to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave!”
“Then why threaten it every week?”
“Because… because…” She couldn’t finish.
“Because you think I’ll beg you to stay,” I finished for her. Silence. “Val, I’m tired of being threatened. Either stay and stop using ‘leaving’ as a weapon, or actually leave. This middle-ground manipulation ends now.”
She locked herself in the bedroom and posted more cryptic stories: When he shows you who he really is, believe him. Yeah, I was showing her someone who wouldn’t be manipulated anymore.
Update Two: Two Weeks Later
The extinction burst was magnificent.
Day Ten: She started packing. Dramatically. Slowly. Lots of sighing. “I guess I’ll start looking for movers,” she announced to the empty room.
“I know a guy,” I said from the kitchen. “Want his number?”
“You’re really going to let me go?”
“Let you? You said you could leave anytime. I believe you.”
She threw clothes in boxes while narrating her pain. “Three years together, and this is how it ends? With you not fighting for us?”
“I fought for two years,” I said. “Every time you threatened to leave, I begged you to stay. I’m tired.”
She stopped packing. “What if… what if I stopped saying it?”
“Saying what?”
“‘That I could leave.'”
“Could you stop? It’s your favorite power move.”
“It’s not about power!”
“Then what’s it about?”
“I just… I need to know you care.”
“By threatening to abandon our relationship? That’s toxic, Val.”
She started crying—angry tears, not sad ones. “You’ve changed! You used to fight for me!”
“I used to be scared of losing you,” I said. “Now I’m more scared of keeping someone who threatens to leave every week.”
But here’s where it got interesting. Remember Rasheed needing a roommate? Well, I’d been helping him find a place. He loved my apartment building. I mentioned it casually while Valerie was fake-packing. “Oh, Rasheed’s taking 4B. The two-bedroom upstairs.”
“What? Why?”
“His current place is too far from work. This is perfect.”
“But that’s… that’s in our building.”
“Yeah. We’ll be neighbors. Well, Rasheed and I will.”
The implication hit her. I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t changing my life. I was just continuing it… without her.
Final Update: One Month Later
The complete meltdown happened at her sister’s birthday dinner. For three weeks, Valerie had tried everything: love-bombing, threats, the silent treatment. Nothing worked.
At the dinner, her family noticed the shift. Her mom asked, “Donovan, you’re so quiet tonight.”
Valerie forced a laugh. “He’s been weird lately, right, babe?”
“Have I?”
Her sister piped up, “Trouble in paradise?”
“No, we’re perfect!” Valerie insisted. “Tell them, Donovan.”
I looked directly at her. “Valerie could leave anytime. She reminds me weekly.”
Silence at the table. Her dad finally asked, “What does that mean?”
“Ask her,” I said. “It’s her favorite phrase.”
After dinner, in the car, she exploded. “How could you embarrass me like that?!”
“By telling the truth?”
“You made me look crazy!”
“You made yourself look manipulative.”
The next day, I came home to find her actually packing. For real this time. Quietly. Efficiently.
“Finally following through?” I asked.
She turned around, tears streaming down her face. “I found the apartment listings. The ones you saved in your bookmarks.”
“Okay.”
“They’re all studios. All one-bedrooms. All for one person.”
“Yeah.”
“You were looking for places for yourself, not for me.”
There it was. The thing she’d never considered. “My lease is up in two months. Thought I’d explore my options.”
“Without me?”
“You could leave anytime. Why would I plan a future with someone who’s always halfway gone?”
“I didn’t mean it!”
“Which time? The hundredth? The two-hundredth?”
She sat among her boxes, realization hitting her. “You’re done. You’re actually done.”
“I’ve been done since the oat milk fight,” I said. “It just took you this long to notice.”
“But I love you.”
“You love controlling me. There’s a difference.”
She left that night. Went to Tony with the Tesla. Posted about “new beginnings.” It lasted exactly one week.
The texts started at 2 a.m.
Can we talk?
I made a mistake. Tony’s a creep.
I’ll never threaten to leave again. I see what I had now.
I’m begging you. Please respond. I have nowhere to go.
I didn’t respond. But I did see her the next week. She was touring apartments in the building. The studio on the first floor—the one I’d sent her originally. She saw me in the lobby. The look on her face when she realized I was staying, thriving, completely unaffected by her absence.
“Donovan.”
“Hi. I’m just looking at places.”
“Cool. Good luck.”
“Maybe we could talk… get coffee?”
“I’m good. But hey, that studio’s actually nice. Affordable, too.”
“Yeah… affordable.”
The manager walked by. “Mr. Hayes! Rasheed’s all moved in. You guys still on for game night Friday?”
“Should be fun.”
Valerie watched me living my life. The life she’d threatened to leave so many times. She walked away. Last I heard, she moved into that studio, posting about her “independent woman life” while working three jobs to afford it. Her bio reads, “Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave.”
Funny thing is, she’s right. She just never thought I’d be the one to realize it first.