
My ex and I were together since we were 15. Seventeen years. He was my first relationship, my first everything. Honestly, he’s all I’ve ever known.
He always knew I wanted to get married—we talked about it from the very beginning. But after all these years, he never proposed. Eventually, I stopped bringing it up and tried to focus on myself. Last year, I finally told him I couldn’t keep living like this, that marriage mattered to me. He said it was “just a piece of paper.” But to me, it wasn’t.









