'I thought my partner was the one. Then I found his notes app I wasn't meant to read.'

There are worse things than being broken up with.

For example: staying in a relationship for almost five years only to discover it's been over for a long time... and finding out via Google Doc.

I found out my relationship was over from a diary I wasn't meant to read. There it was, open on his laptop. My name, typed over and over again like some deranged love spell. We'd just moved into our own apartment, and I was trying to stream a show through our new TV.

I wasn't snooping (truly), but something in my gut told me he'd subconsciously left it there to be found. And so I did what any normal, stable woman with a Wi-Fi connection and mild abandonment issues would do.

I hit Command + F.

What I found was... devastating. Or darkly poetic, depending on your sense of humour.

"I want to be with her, but not for more than four years."

"There is never a right time to break up with someone."

"I think I want kids. Just not with her."

Romance really is alive and well in the age of cloud-based heartbreak.

We'd just moved into a new apartment together. Picture frames were still stacked on the floor.

You know what they say: couples who never hang the art are always halfway out the door.

Watch: MMOL: The dating experience women keep having. Post continues after video.

We told people it was a conscious uncoupling. It was not. It was a slow emotional disintegration that began with passive disinterest and ended with me ugly-crying on the floor next to a dying fiddle-leaf fig.

But let me rewind because, apparently, this is the part where I romanticise a man I've already emotionally outgrown.

We met when I was 22, and he was 26, which felt impossibly grown-up at the time. I was fresh out of my first real relationship. I wasn't looking for anything, but he found me.

I fell headfirst into the kind of intense, messy, dopamine-fuelled infatuation that only a 22-year-old with zero emotional boundaries can manage.

One date turned into a weekend. A weekend turned into a van. A van turned into a pandemic.

And before I knew it, we'd built a life together, half by accident, half out of romantic idealism.

Was it perfect? No. I had plenty of baggage. He had commitment issues that I'd come to learn of over four years too late. But I genuinely believed we were in it together. We became best friends and each other's safe space at the time.

And yet... somewhere in all of that, I missed the shift. The subtle, quiet turning of someone falling out of love. Because what I hadn't realised at the time is that we weren't really seeing each other — we were holding up mirrors, reflecting back the people we wanted the other to be.

And that's how I ended up dropping to the floor of our living room, sobbing into my hands while the ghost of my relationship stared back at me in 12-point Helvetica.

The diary broke my heart. The realisation broke my delusion.

But what broke the spell was this: I stayed. I tried to talk it out. I suggested couples therapy. I was the only one going to therapy in the first place. I kept showing up. Until one day, I realised he wasn't going to.

So I did the only rational thing a 27-year-old romantic with a sense of drama and a Qantas Frequent Flyer account could do: I booked a holiday to get some space and figure out what I wanted. Two days before I left, we broke up.

The surprising thing? The sadness didn't swallow me. Yes, there were tears. Yes, there were days I stared at walls wondering how I got it all so wrong. But in between the grief, there was a quiet sense of relief. Freedom. Possibility.

Listen to this episode of Everyone Has An Ex. Post continues after podcast.

I moved into what my housemate and I jokingly called Heartbreak Hotel. We were both nursing betrayals from men we thought we'd marry. She was in her 40s, I was 27, and we spent nights drinking wine and unpacking the emotional wreckage, like trauma doulas for each other.

Somewhere between therapy, voice notes, late-night debriefs and early-morning workouts, I started to come back to life. I remembered how bright I was. How light I could feel. How good it felt to dance until my calves ached or laugh so hard I could barely breathe.

How goosebumps could take over as I screamed the words of Olivia Rodrigo with my girls at the bar. I remembered who I was; before love, before compromise, before settling for almost.

I used to think romantic love was the pinnacle. That everything else — friendship, travel, freedom — was the supporting act. Now I know that the most important love story I'll ever have is the one I'm writing with myself.

I realised how much I'd changed recently on a beach in France. A previous version of myself on a Friday night would be eating out the palm of an attractive person who'd give me attention.

And so cute guy I'd met at a bar invited me for a drink by the ocean. We smoked, we skinny-dipped, things got steamy... and suddenly I realised I didn't actually want to be there.

What I really wanted was to be at home, pants off, glass of wine in hand, eating a cheeseboard solo and sending chaotic voice notes to my friends.

So I left. And that small decision to choose myself made my night.

I'm currently writing this from a ferry between Athens and Paros Island. Last week, I was in Corfu Island, and next... who knows? But this time I'm choosing myself.

I thought losing him would break me. But what I didn't realise then is that sometimes, heartbreak isn't the ending. It's the opening scene.

Feature Image: Getty. (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).