I don’t need you to ditch your friends, abandon your family, and desert your job in order to spend twenty-four hours a day with me. I have my own life and I want you to have yours. I want you to exist without me.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept excuses about how you’re too busy to see me, too busy to text back, too busy to put in any effort.

If you really cared about me, then you would find a few hours a week to see me. You would text me whenever you had a second to spare. You would be there for me, regardless of everything else you have going on.

Or maybe you really are that busy. But if that’s the case, you should let me go. You should realize that it’s not fair to put me on the sidelines while you live your life without me.

If you’re not ready for a relationship, that’s fine, just don’t pretend that you are ready. Don’t make empty promises about how we’re going to get dinner on Friday and take a vacation this summer when you know you can’t follow through on them.

I don’t like being led on. Lied to. And I’m not going to be in a relationship where I barely see my boyfriend. I don’t want to text you from morning until night, but never see you in person. I don’t want to spend all my time missing you.

To put it simply, if I can’t rely on you, I can’t date you.

If I call you up, bawling my eyes out, I need you to answer. If my car breaks down in the middle of the night, I need to know that you’ll stop everything to help me. I need to feel like a priority.

I’m not asking for you to always put me before everything else. I’m only asking for you to put me first during the moments that matter, when I really need your comfort.

I don’t enter relationships with the intention of them ending. When I date someone, I give them my all. I make sure that they feel loved, that they are comfortable coming to me with all of their fears.

And I expect the same in return.

I’m not going to accept one-sided love. I don’t want to get excited to see you and then have you cancel on me at the last second. I’m not going to let disappointment become an average part of my day.

I refuse to date someone that doesn’t make time for me, because I know what I deserve. I deserve someone that shows up. That falls asleep beside me. That wakes up next to me. That rearranges their life to make room for me.

I deserve someone that puts in effort to keep our relationship strong, because losing me is the last thing they want.