The last six months

Part of me and XN's problems in 2008 came from him visiting a strip club on my brother's stag do. He was so cruel afterwards when he could see I was upset. It took months for him to even listen to me talk about the subject. We never really recovered from that incident and from his treatment of me after.

- My 'informal' leaving do from work
I invited him along to meet my colleagues for the first time because things had been good between us. His mum was a director there and the whole situation had been a bit difficult. I was so happy that things seemed to be finally stable between us.

- The following week, on the way to him driving me to my Christmas party/official leaving do from work:
He made an insensitive comment about a girl, realised he'd screwed up, started punching the steering wheel, and screamed at me that I was a "f**king knob". I jumped out of the car at the next set of traffic lights and went into my own Xmas party crying.

- The following weekend, I was cleaning my house getting ready to hand the keys back. I had a a 3 hour drive ahead of me and was starting a new job the next day. He turned up to get some things of his. He started screaming at me again that the weekend before had been my fault. I threw him out. He came back when he had calmed down and helped me.

- The following weekend, (just before Xmas) I came back up north to go to a concert with him. He lied to me that he was ill, stood me up, and dumped me by text message the next day.


He sent me a happy new year message. I was speechless.

I sent him some diary extracts from over the last couple of years so that he could see his cycle of anger, withdrawal, finishing with me etc.

I spoke to him and persuaded him to get professional help which he did.

During the next 3 months, I was on hand to talk to over the phone and be supportive with his therapy. He seemed to still want me around to talk to and was sweet to me during that time apart from the occasional moody phone call during which he'd be implying that I was stupid to phone him. Once I called to see how he was and we had the most boring conversation and he texted after to say that he found the kind of "intimate conversation that we'd just had difficult, given where we are".

He moved into his own place and phoned me first to give me his new phone number. When I said, "do you want me to phone you then?" he laughed and said "don't be such a bloody martyr!"

On Valentine's Day I was feeling miserable. He texted saying that we should have talked about our 'personality types' (he'd found an old Myers Briggs test that he'd done) and that it could have helped us.

We arranged to meet up 3 months after my Xmas D& D but he said it would only be for one thing and that I had to understand that. He said I shouldn't expect to "have my cake and eat it". [irony #1]

He came to visit me, we had a lovely weekend and arranged to meet up again. He wanted to come down more often but I said that no, we both needed some space to get to know ourselves again [irony #2: I get accused of being controlling and stifling a few months down the line].

He told me during this time that we'd been "almost perfect" but that something always seemed to get in the way. He said our weekend together had been "almost perfect".

During this time, he'd complained of being lonely. I persuaded him to join Facebook so he reconnect with people.

He came down to visit me for a long weekend but had to leave early because he had invited a few people from work round to his new flat for dinner.

A day or two later these trendy young things appeared as friends on his facebook page.

He told them that he'd been visiting his sister the weekend he saw me (his sister lives near me). He told me that he didn't want them to cheapen our r/ship by teasing him that he was only seeing me for one thing.

I was a bit put out but didn't say anything.

I joked that I was going to put a slushy message on his facebook page from "his sister". Immediately he deactivated his facebook a/c and claimed that he'd done that because he wasn't really using it.

I went to visit him on the way back from a course I was on. I found that he'd been looking at porn (a lot) on his new lap top. He'd never done that before. I was gutted. After his insensitivity about the strip club the previous year, my self-confidence in my body and my attractiveness was at an all time low (even now I can't have a bath and I can't stand to catch sight of my naked body in the mirror).

I asked him not to look at porn until we could talk about it again as I had to rush off the next day.

I went up again the following weekend. He was really sweet when I arrived. But then I found his "anxiety book" in which he'd written a lot about a girl from work he'd never even mentioned to me including that he'd "quite like to sh*g her. She looks like she needs a good seeing to."

I was gutted and, after demanding an explanation (pointless), I jumped in the car and drove 3 hours back home at half past midnight.

He phoned and phoned over the next few days to try and sort things out with me. I exploded when I next spoke to him. I'd supported him so much and I felt he was just playing me.

This seemed to be the real reason that he wasn't on facebook. He finally admitted it.

I asked him to put himself back on and to make it known in work that he was seeing me. It took him ten days to do so.

He promised that he wouldn't look at porn or text this girl again.

The following weekend I found more porn on his pc. He told me it was perfectly normal.

The week after that he sent me a text meant for this girl in work. Nothing really bad but he clearly was hoping she would get in touch.

He came down to see me again and I asked him to make a choice. I said that if he wanted this girl in work (she was in a long term r/ship), then I'd wish him luck, and would walk away. If he didn't, then I asked him to stop messing me about. He promised that he wanted to see how things worked out with me.

We went on to have a lovely weekend together - idyllic, picnic in a park, feeding each other strawberries, we went rowing on a river and then had lunch in the sunshine by the river - and then we booked a holiday to Spain together.

The morning of the holiday a few weeks later, I found texts on his phone that showed that he lied to me the previous weekend about what he'd been doing. He'd made me feel sorry for him because he'd been bored, so bored on the Sunday that he'd gone into work. I'd spent time trying to cheer him up and persuaded him to leave work and go out and play golf. The whole time, he'd had plans to go out for the afternoon with these girls from work. It turns out later on that their b/friends were there as well but he didn't tell me that at the time.

He didn't need to lie in the first place if it was all so harmless.

He raged at me, so I threw him out. End of holiday. End of relationship.

He tried to get in touch for 3 days, phoning, texting, e-mailing.

I didn't respond. Then nothing. I must have had 'MUG' tattooed on my forehead.