On the text, the flutter, and the Neverland you didn’t know you were still living in
It’s been six months. My phone lit up with his name. I was deep in the wilderness between Neverland and reality, doing the work, building the life, choosing myself with the kind of daily, unglamorous discipline that nobody applauds but that changes everything.
And my heart lit up too. Just for half a second. That stupid, reflexive flutter, like my chest didn’t get the memo that we’re done here.
Then I read it.
“I will always remember that I was having a hard time and you made it harder.” A passive-aggressive link to some social media post. Because of course. His “hard time.” The one where he was sleeping with someone else. The one where he was living a double life enmeshed with his ex. The one where I was fighting for us while he was dividing himself between multiple women. That hard time?
I wanted to come back swinging. I had the whole defense ready, every piece of evidence lined up, every truth sharpened to a point.
I was trying my hardest while you were cheating. I was fighting through my own hurt while you were piling on manipulation and lies. You made me the villain when I was the one begging you to just be honest.
The words were right there. Sharp. True. Ready.
And then I realised something that made me put the phone down.
The part of me crafting that response was the part of me still living in Neverland. The one where I believed he’d change or grow up or become the person he pretended to be. A different one. A subtler one. The Neverland where I believed that if I just explained it right, if I just presented the evidence clearly enough, if I just found the perfect combination of words, he’d finally get it. He’d say, “Oh my God, you’re right. I never saw it that way. I’m so sorry.”
He wasn’t going to say that.
He was never going to say that.
And the fact that some part of me was still composing the closing argument for a trial that was never going to reach a verdict, that was the fantasy I hadn’t named yet.
I thought my Neverland was just about romantic fantasy. About hoping he’d change. About loving his potential instead of his patterns. And it was, for a long time. But the real Neverland, the one I was still partially living in six months after I’d left, was quieter and harder to see.
It was the fantasy that he’d ever validate my reality.
That he’d admit what he did. Take accountability. See me. Acknowledge the truth. Every response I crafted in my head, every perfect comeback, every undeniable truth bomb, every clever dismissal was me pulling the slot machine handle one more time, hoping this would be the jackpot admission. The one where he finally says what I need to hear.
The house always wins.
The game is rigged. And I was still sitting at the table, feeding it coins, convinced the next pull would pay out.
Reality looks different from Neverland, and it’s challenging in its own way.
But it’s the only place that’s real.
He’ll never get it. Not because he doesn’t understand. But because his entire psychological survival depends on not understanding. Admission would collapse his defensive structure. He’s built his entire post-relationship narrative on DARVO — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender (a little textbooky for here, but it’s necessary). He knows what he did. He’s choosing to flip it. And I can’t love him, argue him, or explain him into enlightenment. I never could. I just kept thinking the next explanation would be the one that broke through.
That’s the slot machine. That’s Neverland. That’s the fantasy of resolution with someone who’s invested in making sure resolution never comes because that requires walking through truth. And walking through truth requires courage.
So reality is sitting with the grief of knowing: the relationship ended without closure. I’ll never get the acknowledgment I deserve. The injustice will stand. He gets to walk away believing his own lies. And that’s crushing. That’s exactly why I kept fighting it, because accepting it felt like letting him win.
But here’s what I’m learning in the wilderness, and it’s taken me six months to see it clearly enough to say it out loud: he doesn’t win by never admitting it. He loses. He loses by having to live inside his own delusion forever, by having to maintain a version of events that requires constant energy to uphold, by never being able to rest in the truth because the truth would require him to face what he’s done and who he actually was in that relationship.
I win by not needing his validation to know the truth.
The part of me still trying to explain, still trying to be heard, still trying to make him understand, those are the parts of me holding on to the last thread of Neverland. The most seductive thread of all, because it feels righteous. It feels like justice. It feels like the natural, healthy, reasonable thing to want: for the person who hurt you to acknowledge that they hurt you. But wanting it and needing it are two different things.
Wanting it is human. Needing it is the trap. Because the need keeps you tethered to someone who’s already shown you, in every possible way, that they’re not capable of giving you what you’re asking for.
I finally heard something that clicked for me. Do not need truth from the mouth that lied to you. Do not need closure from the person who betrayed you.
And in that quote I got, a little bit more free.
My heart lighting up when I saw his name? That reflex will fade. The science says it takes the nervous system longer to update than the mind. The body is still running the old software, still associating his name with the dopamine hit of connection, still responding to the notification the way it learned to during the years I spent training it to equate his attention with safety. That flutter isn’t love. It’s a program. And programmes lose their power when you stop feeding them data.
His patterns won’t fade. Those are permanent. But they’re his to carry now. Not mine.
The part of me that wanted to respond with all my evidence and hurt? She’s not wrong. Everything she wanted to say was true. But she’s still in Neverland, believing in a world where he’s capable of seeing her. And the bravest thing I’ve done since leaving him wasn’t the leaving. It was putting the phone down and letting the truth be true without his co-signature.
I don’t need him to admit anything for me to be free.
I don’t need his version of events to match mine. I don’t need the jury to come back with a verdict, because I’m not on trial and neither is my reality. I know what happened. My body knows what happened. Yeah, I have receipts. And his denial doesn’t have the power to rewrite a single second of it unless I hand him the pen.
I’m not handing him the pen.
I’m picking it up for myself. And I’m writing a story where the woman who was betrayed doesn’t spend another minute trying to make the man who wronged her understand what he did. She just builds a life so real, so grounded, so fully hers that his version of events becomes irrelevant. Not because it doesn’t matter. Because she does. More.
Choose all,
xoxo Viktoria
P.S. Codependency has had me staying silent for decades when I should have spoken. But that includes speaking truth to myself. Sometimes, I’m the one that needs to hear the final verdict out loud.
If you’ve got a draft text sitting in your phone right now, the one you’ve been editing for three days, the one where you’ve finally found the perfect words to make him see what he did, delete it. Not because it isn’t true. Because the person you’re sending it to has already shown you they’re not capable of receiving it. Or, save those words. Write them in a journal. Say them to a friend. Say them to yourself in the mirror. But don’t send them to a man who’ll use your honesty as evidence that you’re the problem. That text isn’t a bridge to understanding. It’s a coin in a slot machine.
And remember… the house always wins.
