My GF Said, “My Friends Think You Limit Me. So We’re Done” I Replied, “Cool. Then Go Join Them” The

“Yo, you good?” he answered.

“Just broke up with Ashley. Well, she broke up with me. Her friends decided I’m not good enough.”

“The podcast people? Dude, finally. You’ve been miserable for months.”

Had I been? Yeah, actually, I had. Just hadn’t admitted it to myself.

“Need me to come over?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m good. Just wanted to tell someone.”

“Proud of you, man. Those people were toxic. Want to hit the climbing gym tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

We talked for another hour about nothing important: work stuff, this new game he was playing, plans for a camping trip we’d been talking about for months but kept postponing. Normal conversation between friends who don’t treat every interaction like therapy. The next day was Saturday.

Ashley texted at 10:00 a.m.

“Can we talk about this?”

I replied, “Nothing to talk about. Your stuff is ready. Let me know when you’re picking it up.”

“You’re really just giving up on us like this?”

“You broke up with me, Ashley, at the request of your friends. I’m just respecting your decision.”

Classic. The script in her head had me begging, making some grand gesture, proving I cared enough to grovel. She wanted the drama, the content, the story about the boyfriend who couldn’t handle her growth.

Instead, “I’m not fighting to stay in a relationship where my privacy gets violated and I’m treated like a character in someone else’s podcast. Come get your stuff.”

She showed up that afternoon with Lauren in tow. I’d strategically made plans to be at the climbing gym during the pickup window. Didn’t trust myself to stay calm if I had to watch them pack the last remnants of our relationship.

Jake spotted me while I worked through problems on the wall. Neither of us talked about the elephant in the room. Got a text from Ashley around 4:00 p.m.

“Got everything. Thanks for packing it.”

I guess that was it. Two years condensed into boxes and a passive-aggressive text. I blocked her number, blocked her on social media, blocked Vanessa and the whole crew—nuclear option.

The Weight Lifting Off

Sometimes you don’t need closure. You just need to close the door and lock it. The next week was weird.

Not bad weird, just different. I kept expecting to feel something dramatic: grief, anger, regret. Instead, I mostly felt relieved, like I’d been holding my breath underwater for months and could finally surface.

Mornings were suddenly mine again. No more tiptoeing around while Ashley slept in. No more adjusting my schedule to accommodate her late-night podcast recording sessions.

I’d wake up, make coffee exactly how I liked it, and take my time getting ready without someone sighing dramatically about bathroom time. Work became easier. Didn’t have to worry about getting home at a specific time or texting updates about my schedule.

Could grab food with co-workers without it becoming a boundary violation. Could spend a Saturday working on a personal coding project without someone sighing dramatically about quality time. My boss, Jake, noticed the change during a meeting that Tuesday.

“You seem different,” he said after everyone else had left the conference room. “More present.”

“Different how?”

“Like you’re not constantly checking your phone or worrying about something. When’s the last time you actually took a full lunch break?”

I thought about it. Months. It had been months since I’d taken a real lunch break without Ashley texting every 15 minutes asking when I’d be home, or what I was doing, or who I was with.

“Relationship ended,” I said simply.

Jake nodded.

“The podcast girlfriend. Good. She was exhausting you, man. We all noticed.”

That surprised me.

“You did?”

“Dude, you’d get this look every time your phone buzzed. Like you were bracing for impact. That’s not healthy.”

He was right. I’d spent the last year constantly monitoring my behavior, my words, my tone. Always worried about being recorded, analyzed, or judged.

Now I could just exist without being studied. Jake and Trevor, my buddy from college, took me out for dinner that Friday. Nothing fancy, just burgers at this place near the Marina.

No agenda, no deep emotional processing, just three friends eating good food and talking about normal stuff.

“So, the podcast princess is officially gone?” Trevor asked, stealing a fry from my plate.

“Yep. Traded me in for her toxic friend group.”

“Good riddance, man. That whole situation was weird from the start.”

Trevor had met Ashley once at a birthday party last year. She’d spent the entire time taking photos for Instagram and barely talked to anyone.

“She treated your relationship like a reality show,” Jake added.

“That’s accurate.”

“What’s your next move? Getting back out there or taking a break?”

“Taking a break. Need to remember what it’s like to just be myself without someone analyzing my every word.”

“Smart. Also, we should do that camping trip we’ve been talking about. October’s perfect for Big Sur.”

We made actual plans that night. Not vague “we should do this sometime” plans, but concrete dates and logistics. Felt good to commit to something without worrying if it would conflict with Ashley’s group hangouts or whether planning ahead made me controlling.

The camping trip happened three weeks later. Just me, Jake, Trevor, and Miles—another friend from work who’d been wanting to join for ages. We drove down the coast, found a site near the water, spent two days hiking, cooking over a fire, and not checking our phones every five minutes.

It was exactly what I needed. No performance, no content creation, just four friends existing in nature without documentation or analysis. We told bad jokes, argued about the best way to set up a tent, and cooked meals that were probably terrible but tasted amazing because we were starving from hiking.

On the last night, sitting around the fire, Trevor brought it up again.

“Real talk, are you doing okay with the whole Ashley thing?”

“Honestly, yeah. Better than okay. No regrets, only that I didn’t see it sooner. That whole situation was toxic and I kept telling myself it was normal.”

Miles, who’d never met Ashley but heard the stories, shook his head.

“Man, sharing your private texts with strangers… that’s not just toxic. That’s illegal in some states. Violation of privacy laws.”

“Don’t even get me started on the legal aspects,” I said. “I work in cybersecurity. What they were doing would get them fired at most companies.”