ok, well I’ve decided to publish the whole story, as far as I currently understand events. This is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me, and I guess I’m just wandering around in shock at the moment.
\nAs you know from previous posts, Andrea and I parted last Thursday. I hadn’t really had any warning at all – I had suspected that she was unhappy about something, but felt that we knew and loved each other well enough that if she wanted to talk about it she would. I put a good deal of it down to the fact that she had only just gone back to work for the new term, which is something she always finds stressful.
\nThe reason she gave for wanting to end our relationship was that she didn’t love me enough. I’ve been keen for us to move in together, and had even talked about a longer term future (yes, marriage), although for practical reasons and also with regard to Andrea’s nervousness, I was prepared to wait and wasn’t going to force the issue. I couldn’t envisage us living together much before the end of this year at the earliest.
\nWell, according to Andrea, she feels that I’m not the one that she wants to be with for the long term, and it is best that we split now, and not six months, a year or two years down the road.
\nNaturally, I was devastated. When I got to work that day, I immediately sent e-mails to my best friends Sarah and Kev. Sarah called me straight away, and said not to worry and to talk about things in the evening, which was exactly what I planned to do. Kev basically just said “shit”, offered to meet for lunch (which I couldn’t do) and then went quiet.
\nLater in the day, I got the first bombshell – an e-mail from Kev, telling me that he had had “feelings” for Andrea ever since I had introduced them, about four or five days after we had met. It was because of these feelings that he had split with Tanya last year.
\nNow, please bear in mind that Kev is no ordinary mate to me. He has been by best mate for nearly twenty years – more than two-thirds of my life. We have holidayed together, got drunk together, shared secrets – everything you would expect two lifelong mates to do.
\nSo, after work, I arranged to go to Andrea’s flat to talk things through, hopefully persuade her not to leave me, and then discuss how to deal with Kev.
\nWhen I got in the door, and before mentioning Kev, she said that she knew I would want to talk, but that she wasn’t going to change her mind. You can guess my reaction – after such a long and happy time together, I just dissolved.
\nWe did talk it through for a while. And then I showed her Kev’s long e-mail (two sides of A4). She told me that she had no idea how he felt (which I believed – yet now, I am beginning to doubt), but then came the second bombshell – she said that she felt “feelings” for Kev too.
\nWell, I’ll spare you the details of how I spent the whole weekend crying and shaking. Sarah, Fi, DAGS and Robyn have all been fabulous – without them, I don’t know what I would have done. Somehow, during the course of Friday and the weekend, I managed to go and give two presentations, and also clear up my flat and put all Andrea’s things into bags – an incredibly hard thing to do, as each item has so many memories attached to it. There are some things I just can’t touch at the moment – the bag full of souvenirs from our holidays together is still sitting under the table, untouched. I can’t bear to look at them. And there is a big pile of photographs too.
\nOn Sunday night I called Andrea. She didn’t return my message – I now know that she must have been at Kev’s. She called me back last night, and I arranged to take her stuff round to her and pick up my things from her flat – and for us to give back each other’s keys.
\nIt was very hard. I was in tears, she wasn’t – she just kept saying that she “had to be strong for both of us”. Eventually, I asked her if she had spoken to Kev. She looked me in the eye, and I knew what she was going to say:
\n“Yes”
\n“and are you going to see each other?”
\n“Yes”
\nWhen I left Andrea’s a short time later, I drove straight to Sarah’s house (Andrea phoned ahead to say I was coming). Poor Sarah – her boyfriend Jeremy was there for the first time in nearly two weeks, having been away for work. I don’t remember anything about driving there. When I got there, I just sobbed on Sarah’s sofa.<\/p>\n
So, you can see, I’ve lost the woman I loved more than any other, the one I really, honestly thought I might stay with. And I’ve lost the bloke I loved more than any other, my best mate for nearly twenty years, who I’d shared everything with.
\nI’m full of “why” questions at the moment. I’m also doubtful of so many things that I previously thought were true. I’m not even sure that I should have trusted Kev and Andrea. Probably not. But at the same time, I can’t believe that Andrea would set out to hurt me – in fact, I’m convinced that she didn’t. And I’m worried for her too – I just don’t think that Kev is the right person for her, and I think that she is going to get hurt. I’m not just saying that because I’m the jilted party, but because I know her and care for her.
\nWhat now? Well, I’m in recovery. It’s going to take a while to get out of this hole. Bear with me.
\nAnd why have I blogged this? Because I need to tell this story. And, if Kev reads it, I want him to know how I feel – that I still love Andrea and would do anything to get her back. But that he’s blown it – that he can’t ever expect to regain the trust and friendship that he had with me. And when he splits with Andrea, I won’t be here for him. But I will be there for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ok, well I’ve decided to publish the whole story, as far as I currently understand events. This is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me, and I guess I’m just wandering around in shock at the moment. As you know from previous posts, Andrea and I parted last Thursday. I hadn’t really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-very-old-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}