How I Convinced My Partner to Go to Therapy

By Sophie Gerchikov '23

I thought we were perfectly compatible. He had all the qualities I looked for in a partner: a tolerable personality, a flexible schedule, and a pulse. I like to consider myself to be a strong independent woman, but I didn’t feel like doing everything alone for another semester. We met in a precept and immediately hit it off, and within two weeks, he asked to be exclusive. He seemed extremely adequate, and all of the other potential partners I had considered were no longer available, so it didn’t take much convincing. That decision was my first of many errors that semester. The dude had serious communication issues. I’d text him asking when we could meet up, and suddenly he always had other plans. He’d always show up at the last minute, saying he had to “finish an assignment,” and I began to seriously question whether this relationship was mutually beneficial. One day, I glanced at his computer screen and saw the email exchanges he had been secretly having with our TA. He had betrayed my trust for the last time. I was at my breaking point. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your partner and for yourself is to let them go. And that’s exactly what I did. I flushed seventeen 3-ply masks down his toilet each day for the rest of the semester, caused several university-wide emails to be sent, and did the remainder of the COS 126 projects by myself. I ended up getting an A. He had to drop the class, change his major, and switch dorms. Six months later, he is now in therapy, and I am a COS 126 TA. The moral of the story is that you should never settle for a bad partner. Your self-worth and GPA deserve better. SG '23