AS ONE WHO loved and lost, I am writing to air my feelings about relationships. Those who have been through what I have would understand where I am coming from, and those who have never suffered the deep pain of a soured romance might learn something.
My girlfriend left me for someone else after living with me for three years.
Prior to our shacking up, we were close friends for four years.
When she first started acting up, she denied there was someone else. She insisted that all she needed was space. I could understand that because she was 23 and we were together from her teenaged years.
I gave her the latitude she demanded but the distance continued, and the slightest quip from me would cause a noise. This was not her usual behaviour, and I felt I was unable to fulfil her needs.
But I loved her and held firm, taking her excesses in stride.
Then about a week before the split things suddenly began to improve. She was like her old self again.
We talked more and actually made love three of the five nights prior to her departure.
She gave no hint of what she was planning. The morning of the day she bolted, I left for work a contented woman. We made love just hours earlier, and she lay in bed watching my every move as I got dressed. I thought then she had overcome her depression.
By the time I returned home after six that evening, she was gone. All that belonged to her that remained was a pair of shoes I had borrowed two days earlier.
There was no note, or anything to say where she was, or why she left. Totally devastated, I rang a workmate of hers only to be told she had taken holiday from that day.
For the next three weeks I heard nothing. It was the most painful period I ever went through in my life. I got sick, could not eat, and felt I as if I was losing my mind.
When she finally returned she went first by her brother, and then into the other woman’s house. She refused to take my calls and would not talk to me when I went by her workplace. It was only after I collapsed at work and had to be hospitalized that she finally came around.
She told me she didn’t love me any more and wanted to get on with her life. She then asked me to be happy for her.
Can you imagine your lover saying that to you after all you have shared together?
I don’t hate her for leaving, though I feel deceived. Neither do I resent her for moving in with someone else, though that makes me realize how dishonest she really was.
What cut me up was how she could just walk away from our friend without looking back. (NA)
