When I was only 25 years old, just days before Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend at the time returned from a 3-week vacation. During our time apart, (like many women might do) I had spent a long time thinking about our future and where things were headed. We’d been dating for over a year, and had talked about marriage in the way you do when you’re not yet engaged, but it’s essentially a certainty. My world was flipped upside down, though, because after he showed up at my door, arms overflowing with gifts from his travels, and showed me his 400 pictures from his trip, he said those fateful words “I’m breaking up with you.â€