Absolutely. He was there because he was getting something out of being there. After all that time, he knew you a lot better than you realize. You weren't fooling him into anything.

A person who says, "Stay with me because you're not good enough for anyone else." is the manipulator. That's the person who is orchestrating a charade. What orientation you are is kind of beside the point.

You owe nothing. That person stuck around to get what he was getting - sick as that might have been.

Now here is an important thing for you to understand. There's no such thing as "trying to break up." That really means waiting for permission from the other party. That means, "I can only do what he'll let me." Having that mind-set means you can't make any decisions. So there's no trying; there's just waiting . . . for what will never come.

The only way to break up is to break up. You leave. And you accept that what becomes of his life is his business, not yours. So long as you let there be strings keeping you tethered, your life isn't your own.

Often people think that the longer they've been doing something, the more necessary it is to keep doing it. That's not true. Sometimes it can take years to figure out that you got into something that was bad for you. (I've been there.) That only means that you have less time you can afford to waste.

Reach out to the world around you, and don't wait to be given permission to live your life. Give yourself the permission.