I Broke Up With My Boyfriend At This Pivotal Age. I’m Not The Only One — And There’s Actual Science That Explains Why.

The author on her 25th birthday.

When I turned 25, I cried on my birthday. Not out of some melodramatic dread of the quarter-century milestone, but because something inside me shifted. Suddenly an internal spotlight flickered on, illuminating every corner of my life I had been unwilling to inspect too closely. Choices I had made, realities I had tolerated, a relationship I’d outgrown. The person I was with ― and who I was  ― no longer felt right, and I had to make a change.  

Turning 25.