How did it come to this? Well, it was the old cliché. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and end up on the road to happy ever after.
I was 22, and this was my first serious relationship.
Before this I’d spent six years messing around with guys, then suddenly Mr. X dropped into my life and before I knew it I found myself content and happy to settle. We dated for four years before we bought a little house to call our own, a place we knew was home from the moment we opened the front door. It was a place we’d planned to grow a life together.
Then, something happened. He started working interstate during the week and before I knew it the man I was so deeply in love with betrayed me. While I was back home keeping the fires burning, he was getting his end away with hotel reception staff and any office worker he could pick up in his lunch hour. There were numerous indiscretions and I had absolutely no idea.
For almost two years this went on without my knowledge. I don’t even know how I figured it all out. When I confronted him his response was: “It’s not that I don’t love you, I do, it’s just that you’re not here with me.” No shit Sherlock, that’s because our home and my work is in another state! It’s not rocket science, moron. I was shattered.
Once trust goes, love quickly follows. I went on with life all for the sake of keeping up appearances, but things between us were never the same again. I lived in hope that i’d be able to forgive him but I was fooling myself. I lived a double life for six years, until one day he announced, quite unexpectedly, that he was leaving. After a decade together, I was no longer what he wanted. Just like that, he walked out the door and I never saw or heard from him again. I know I should have left six years earlier, but I wasn’t going to lose everything i’d worked so hard for, particularly not my home. He’d walked into this relationship with nothing: no car, no money, no full-time job. I set him up with everything from writing his job applications to funding a car and putting a roof over his head. I felt used just so he could get ahead.
While the relief of his departure was overwhelming, the thought of a future on my own scared the hell out of me.
The Dating Diary 