My boyfriend doesn’t appreciate me. In my heart I know I should break up with him but I can’t. We’ve been together for almost 10 years and he’ll never marry me. We don’t even live together. He keeps me at a distance. I’ve been the coolest girlfriend ever and he doesn’t even seem to care. I can feel all of our friends secretly feeling sorry for me, I can feel the sympathetic “poor girl” looks when people ask when we’ll get married and I shrug and he says “Never. We don’t believe in that.” His friends tell him how jealous they are that he has such a great, funny, smart girlfriend who doesn’t nag him and doesn’t control him and has great taste in music and movies and he just takes me for granted. Half of me, the half who puts on the front of being a cool, tough chick, the half who yells at girls who say stuff like I’m saying now, is saying “Dump this guy and find someone who will appreciate how awesome and amazing you are,” but the other half of me, the cripplingly poor self esteem, the girl who was teased in school, who never had a date, the part who’s been through so much with him, the part who just wants to please everyone and wants people to like her, the half who aches for someone to love her and think she’s the best, wants to stay with him. I know how pathetic I am and can see myself being pathetic but I can’t help it. I don’t know why I’m even bothering, I just keep hoping that things will go back to how they used to be, when we were in love and he at least acted like he was happy to see me and hang out with me. I think I’m throwing years of my life away feeling like this. I just feel so lonely.