A different kind of goodbye
Listen, I need to tell you something that might fuck with everything you’ve been told about leaving toxic relationships.
Leaving Neverland doesn’t necessarily mean leaving him.
I know. I KNOW. Every relationship book, every therapist, every well-meaning friend has been screaming “JUST LEAVE HIM, GIRL!” And maybe you will. Maybe you should. But that’s not what this is about.
Leaving Neverland means leaving the fantasy. The delusion. The waiting room you’ve been living in where you put your actual life on hold while you wait for him to become the man you need him to be.
Here’s what leaving Neverland actually looks like:
You stop being his mother. When he forgets to pay his phone bill and gets it shut off, you don’t rush to handle it. You let him sit with the consequences like the grown man he claims to be. His chaos is no longer your emergency.
You stop translating his bullshit into poetry. When he says “I’m just not good at relationships,” you hear “I don’t want to put in effort” instead of “I’m a beautiful broken bird who needs your healing love.” You start believing what he shows you, not the potential you’ve imagined.
You stop making yourself smaller to accommodate his moods. Your voice stays at its natural volume even when he’s having a tantrum. You take up space in your own life. You have opinions that might inconvenience him, and you express them anyway.
You stop waiting. This is the big one. You stop waiting for him to text back, to make plans, to follow through, to change. You make your own plans. You fill your own life. You stop treating his attention like it’s oxygen and start breathing on your own.
One of three things may happen:
When you truly leave Neverland—when you stop participating in the fantasy that love means suffering—one of three things happens:
Sometimes he wakes up. Without you enabling his Peter Pan bullshit, he might actually face himself. It’s rare, but I’ve seen men choose growth when their Wendy stops playing along. When you stop being his safety net, sometimes he learns to fly for real.
Sometimes you stay together, but differently. You love him AND you love yourself. You see him clearly—flaws, limitations, and all—and you choose him anyway, but without sacrificing yourself on the altar of his dysfunction. You participate in the parts of the relationship that work and you stop pretending the rest exists.
Sometimes the relationship dissolves naturally. Because without you maintaining the fantasy, there’s nothing left. The relationship was built on you doing all the work, and when you stop, it stops. And that tells you everything you needed to know.
Here’s how you know you’ve left Neverland:
Your life exists independent of his availability. You have plans, friends, interests, and joy that have nothing to do with whether he’s having a good day or a bad day.
You stop taking his issues personally. His inability to commit isn’t about your worth. His emotional unavailability isn’t about your approach. His shit is his shit, and you stop making it mean something about you.
You match his investment. If he gives 30%, you give 30%. You stop overcompensating for his underperformance. You stop being the only one rowing the relationship boat.
Your body relaxes. You’re not constantly tight, anxious, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Your shoulders come down from your ears. You sleep through the night instead of checking your phone.
The thing nobody tells you about leaving Neverland:
It’s not actually about him at all. It’s about coming home to yourself. It’s about remembering that you’re a whole person with a whole life, not a supporting character in his drama.
It’s about recognizing that you’ve been so focused on earning love that you forgot you already deserve it. You’ve been so busy trying to help him grow up that you stopped growing yourself.
When you leave Neverland, you might leave him too. Or you might not. But either way, you leave behind the version of yourself who thought suffering was the price of love. You leave behind the girl who confused anxiety with passion, chaos with connection, potential with reality.
You stop asking “How can I make him love me?” and start asking “Is this how I want to be loved?”
And that question changes everything.
Because leaving Neverland isn’t about getting him to change. It’s about changing your relationship with yourself. It’s about choosing reality over fantasy, even when fantasy feels safer because at least you know the script.
The mainland is where your real life is waiting. Where love doesn’t require you to shrink. Where you don’t have to earn what should be freely given. Where you can be fully yourself without apology or explanation.
Maybe he’ll meet you there. Maybe he won’t.
But here’s the secret: Once you truly leave Neverland, once you’re living your actual life instead of waiting for it to begin, you realize something that breaks the whole game wide open:
You don’t need him to choose you. You’ve already chosen yourself.
And that, beautiful? That’s when you’re finally free.
Not free from love. Not free from him, necessarily. But free from the fantasy that’s been keeping you small, stuck, and waiting by the window for a boy who may never grow up.
Your real life is waiting for you on the mainland. All you have to do is stop participating in the fantasy and start participating in your own damn existence.
The door has always been open. You’ve always had the power to leave.
The question is: Are you ready to use it?
Fuck the fairy tale.
Choose all,
Viktoria
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