Independence is knowing you’ll be okay even if they don’t come back.

None of this is about caring less. Wanting somebody to stay is normal, and losing them hurts exactly as much as it hurts. What changes is whether your whole footing was outsourced to them: whether your week, your plans, your sense of being all right run on a person who is free to go.

Build a life that would still stand if they left, not as rehearsal for losing them, but because it makes the loving easier. Your own money where possible, your own friends, your own thing on Tuesday nights. Staying because you want to beats staying because there is nothing else.