the million dollar man

and how he broke my million dollar heart

There comes a moment near the end of a relationship when everything begins to feel colder, quieter. His arms no longer holds you tightly; his gaze, once so full of warmth, turns distant and empty. The texts grow fewer, his attention drifts, and his willingness fades, it’s redirected elsewhere. But where? To whom? To what?

When the end finally comes, it’s almost a relief, as painful as it is. Breakups, even heartbreaking ones, are easier to face when they’re inevitable. But the hardest breakup for a twenty-something isn’t the one you see coming. It’s the one that blindsides you, the one you never expected.

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He cried like someone mourning a role he was tired of playing. He had been an actor, (metaphorically speaking), performing the part of a man who had everything together, who could love without limits, who could be everything I needed. In that moment, as his voice cracked and his tears fell, I realised he had already let go long before I even knew there was a problem.

That’s the thing about men, though. They can be everything, until they can’t. They can cry, break, tell you they’re sorry and still leave you shattered. The tears don’t make it better. The explanations don’t make it easier either. His pain doesn’t erase mine. Instead, it lingers, like a cruel echo, making me feel like I’m the one who failed. Like I was supposed to see the cracks in his performance and help him hold it all together.

I remember when I met him, it wasn’t his status that caught my attention. It wasn’t the money, or the family name, or the way his world. None of that mattered to me because he didn’t carry it like a crown. He carried it like a responsibility. He worked hard, harder than anyone I’d ever known… and when he spoke about his future, it was never just about himself. It was about his family, his legacy, the people he cared for. It wasn’t his money that mattered to me. To me, he was the ‘Million Dollar Man’, because he had everything — ambition without arrogance, charm without vanity. He wasn’t some spoiled nepo baby, flaunting his life like a trophy. He wore khakis and spent hours tuning his car, more interested in earning his own worth than resting on his family’s name. That balance, that depth — that’s what made me respect him.

I think that’s part of why I loved him. Not for what he had, but for what he was building. For what he wanted to give.

And I loved him for all of it.

The way his eyes lit up when he saw me, the pride in his voice when he introduced me to his friends, the quiet humility he carried despite the world he came from. My mother, who never missed a chance to poke at my flaws, couldn’t help but praise me for finding a man with such a successful, respected family. For a moment, I felt like a Kennedy, like I’d stepped into something rare and untouchable. It was the approval I got from everyone else, the way they saw him as the perfect man, that reiterated the voice in my head that this could be it. and I was happy, so very damn happy.

I cried and cried, until I didn’t think there was anything left inside of me. And then, somehow, there was more. Two weeks of it. Two weeks of replaying everything, picking apart every conversation, every moment, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Two weeks of staring at myself in the mirror and seeing someone I didn’t recognise. The weight I’d gained wasn’t just physical. It was emotional, too, pressing down on my self-worth until it felt like it couldn’t get back up.

It pains me to admit that a man, a man… caused me so much insecurity, but that’s the truth. Him leaving, cracked something in me I thought was unbreakable. I tried to remind myself it wasn’t true. That my worth wasn’t tied to his approval, that I wasn’t defined by how he saw me, or worse, how I thought he saw me. However, even knowing that, I still had to feel it. I had to sit with the ugly, suffocating weight of it, let it settle in my chest, before I could start to scrape it away.

And that’s the cruel thing about heartbreak. You can’t skip it. You can’t fast-forward to the part where you feel whole again. You have to live in it, let it break you open, let it tarnish every bit of self-love you worked so hard to build, because that’s the only way you heal. You let it destroy you, so you can rebuild. Its unfair, so very unfair.

Happiness has a way of slipping through your fingers, doesn’t it? Especially for girls that always love more, the ones who still believe in love, in forever, in something more. The ones who carry the weight of hope in a generation that treats love like an antique, something quaint and outdated, traded in for convenience and fleeting affection.

We’re the ones who hold onto the idea that love is something you build, something you fight for. We romanticise, yes, but not because we’re naive. It’s because we want to believe that the connection, the passion, the electricity we feel when we’re with someone can mean something, can be the start of something unbreakable. That hope feels increasingly out of place in a world where love isn’t the goal anymore. It’s just the scaffolding, the temporary structure people climb to reach what they really want: attention, validation and something easy.

Perhaps that’s the cruelest thing of all, to still want love in a time when no one else seems to. To dream of a forever when most people can barely commit to next week. Girls who love more, we’re not just fighting for love. We’re fighting to keep the hope alive, even as the world tells us we’re foolish for believing it still matters, but to any girl who’s like this just know it does get better and when you rest to lay once and for all, you’ll be remembered as someone who was undeniably themself; hopeful and beautiful in everyday.

So if he was such a ‘million dollar man’ why is my heart broke?

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I sat across from my friend at our bar(lets call him Teddy). The weight of the photo was pressing into me like a dagger. I told him about it… the picture of him and her, “the girl best friend'“, smiling like they’d always been destined to end up together.

I wasn’t supposed to see it, of course… he’d blocked me from his story. However he forgot to block my girlfriends.(what an idiot) And just like that, the truth was staring me in the face.

Teddy listened quietly, the way he always does, his steady presence giving me space to breathe. I needed advice, needed to hear something from someone who understood love. When he finally spoke, his words hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting, suddenly everything was so clear to me…

"At some point, love is about choosing the other person." he said. "You choose them every day. You’ll face hard decisions, hard moments, but the choice itself should always be easy. It’s about picking each other, no matter what."

His words landed softly but carried weight. Love is choosing.

I realised in that moment that those simple words cleared EVERYTHING up for me;

he had chosen not to choose me…

instead he chose someone else.

I’m over him. I’m not in love with him anymore, I wouldn’t break if I ever saw him again. Now, there’s just this dark, lingering pit inside me on how I thought of him. Not because of who he moved on with, or how quickly he did it, but for a moment, he took away something I have always held onto…

My ability to believe.

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Well, there you go, the story of how I got my heartbroken by the ‘million dollar man.’ After a year later, it has gotten much better! much better than I expected, I kept busy with internships and my education and im excited for this single and fabulous chapter of my life. Oddly enough, I grew more of a person then I thought I would. Im excited for my career and my future and I guess thank you for that.

To all my Charlotte York’s out there; do not lose hope. Do not become one of them. Do not give into cheap love. Invest in yourself, your friendships and your future and take a break. Whatever you like, just know I’ll always be here for you, judgement free and ready to listen.

stay kind and stay curious,

xoxo,

Daughter Of Discourse <3

ps. Thank you for everything: CB, Jonas, Teddy, Mina & Isabel for being there for me <3