The other day I sent a message to an ex. We broke up around a year ago and it still hurts. He thinks I want to get back. That’s not the case (I think).
What hurts is how and why we broke up.
The actual break-up started when I caught him “cheating”. It was a bizarre thing. He had connected with an ex while I was not in town. I didn’t know her. But she and I have a common friend, who messaged me saying that my boyfriend had reached out to this woman, and if he and I were still dating.
And that’s how everything started to unwind.
I had the opportunity, it seems, to get the woman to speak to him a little more, check if he was seeing someone, may be even try to set up a faux date and see what his intentions might have really been. Instead, I messaged him. What the hell, is this I asked. Asking for accountability, more than an explanation. He said he was in town on a last-minute work and didn’t want to dishearten me as I wouldn’t be around. That he wasn’t trying to hook up, but just meeting a friend.
This conversation ended with a break-up. But I feel we’d been leading up to it for months. He and I lived in different cities. We’d met online during the pandemic and in an environment where meeting wasn’t possible, everything was hunky dory.
Then the lockdown ended.
We met in February 2021. But it was not because he came to my town to meet me. He was in Jaipur for work and so I travelled from Delhi to meet him. That first time was short - but great. We’d been speaking for a year and our chemistry had been great from Day 1. We were both excited to see each other. Both of us were nervous, but after the initial awkwardness we settled into our sense of familiarity. Our first physical touch was a hug, which was the kind of hug you give someone you’ve been waiting to see for ages.
We went out for dinner and spent the night together in a strange city.
The next morning he headed for his work meetings and I met a friend in Jaipur and then headed back home. I couldn’t stop smiling. I’d finally met him. It was no longer one of those internet romances that never culminates in a real-life relationship. Our relationship continued as is from then. We’d speak about 20-30 minutes daily and text through the day.
But as work and work pressures picked up for him post pandemic, the calls became shorter. The calls twice a day would often be cut to once a day. He lived with family, and so speaking at home was difficult, he said. Ideas for virtual dates were met with “yeah, let’s see”. Sexting would barely last a few minutes. The question of actually meeting again was always subject to his work commitments. I’d wait for him to announce when he’d be in Delhi again. Those days were few and far between.
A lot of thoughts come up when behaviour changes. “Am I not interesting enough. Am I boring? Was the sex not good?” I was confused. And if I did bring it up and he did say gently that nothing was missing in the relationship for him. He simply didn’t have the time/mind space for it.
I told myself that he must genuinely must not have the time and been under pressure at work and blah blah blah. Did it ever occur to me that I was making excuses for him? Yes.
Did I ignore this thought? Yes.
I know what you are thinking now.
Why did I hold on?
I’d had almost 1.5 years of constant attention. He’d call twice a day, and we’d talk at length about everything under the sun. Video calls were always limited, but affection, flirting and lust were not. I get the sense now that he isn’t great at sexting, but he did respond as much as work allowed him.
While discussing what we were looking for in relationships, I shared that while marriage wasn’t a top priority, effort and commitment was. I don’t remember the exact context, but going in we both knew this was a long-distance relationship and it might get tough at certain turns. He’d said there’d be ebbs and flows in the relationship. (I listened like a student. What did I know about managing relationships? Perhaps he knew better).
We’d been in a year and a half of flows. I could be okay with some amount of ebbing. Plus, he and I made a pact that we’d be honest with each other. And didn’t that honesty then imply that if you no longer wanted to be in the relationship, you’d mention it?
But beneath it was something else too.
I was 38. Most of my other relationships had ended within two months. So, I never ever got to say “I have a boyfriend”. And unless you have been in these shoes, you cannot imagine how important it feels to be able to say it. It felt like I finally fit in this world. As though what had seemed to be “wrong” with me until now, no longer was. It feels like I was finally an acceptable member of society (and to all those people who say ‘being partnered isn’t everything’—even my woke friends send me Insta posts about dating apps that I should try!). So, yeah. Being partnered did feel nicer than being single.
Because, there was someone I could talk to who was all mine. Whom I told about my day to and who told me about his. There was someone who made me laugh. He never made me feel bad about myself, never criticised me and when I’d ask him when he’d be visiting me and he didn’t have an answer, he’d apologise.
I’d been single for a long time. While my friends were dating guys and getting proposed to in college, I was spending time in the library or on the sports field or fantasising about a crush I’d never spoken to.
When I started working, I was the only girl in my office who had never been wooed. There was one coincidental day—weirdly not Valentine’s Day—when all the girls in the team got flowers from the men dating them or trying to. All of them. Just not me. My friend would say “I don’t know why you are single. I mean you are so cool!” And, more than anything else that would make me wonder, why am I single? What’s so unattractive about me?
There’s much I’d try to blame. Fat. Pimples. General plain looks. Bad dressing. When you try to find reasons, the list can become suffocatingly long.
This is not to say I didn’t ever have any one at all in my life. I did. But it never really lasted. And when they ended it, the guys would shrug as if “it didn’t mean anything”. One guy actually said it to my face. “It didn’t mean anything”.
It felt like a slap to my face. Like someone has shown me my “place”. Even now I don’t have a feeling about it, just a kind of a numbness. All I could do then was get up and leave quietly with any dignity I could hold on to. All I remember of that moment is leaving for home and never speaking to him again. He has called so many times over the years to apologise. But the apology feels meaningless because the meaning of his actions was never acknowledged in the first place.
Then came Tinder, dating apps and many new ways of meeting guys. I realised I wasn’t unattractive. In fact, going by the evidence, I was quite fuckable. But apparently, I was not the person that inspires someone to call back the next day. I realise I’m not alone in that, but that doesn’t mean it feels great.
When the date went well (according to you) and you don’t get the call, it’s bad enough. But when you make out, kiss, have sex and still get ghosted it feels like you were “used”. Like the person didn’t see you at all, or worse saw you and found you uninteresting. Again, I felt like I was nothing.
The first time this guy and I had sex in that strange city, I braced myself, that it would be over. “May be it was bad. May be, after the sex he’s got bored with me.” But he stayed. He called back after both us went back to our own cities.
And he called day in and day out after that. Texted me. And in knowing that that call would come in the morning, that I’d wake up to a good morning message, or that even if we hadn’t spoken the whole day, there’s be a Goodnight message with kisses and hugs, was the biggest gift of security that the relationship gave.
During this time, a young cousin came to stay with me. Dating someone in the city, her life was full of all the wonders of being with someone. Cuddling over Netflix, going out for dinners, getting flowers, getting gifts on birthdays and Valentine’s Day. I was forced to bear witness. To watch. It would drive me to rage. Because even though I had a boyfriend, in many ways I was so alone.
The days that felt the worst were the festivals and the holidays. In my earlier job, I’d never get leave for anything. So, all important days of the year were spent at work, dressed up or not. Now, I was at home. And the house looked bleak. Having moved out of my hometown for college, I rarely had family around unless it was a big celebration.
Break up? But it’s not easy. It’s also not one thing or the other.
He didn’t buy flowers or send gifts—he said he just wasn’t the type. It hurt, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I had had guys who bought me gifts. And in the end they too had dumped me unceremoniously. Here was someone who for three years was there. I valued that. Plus, there was the hope that things would get better. That instead of roses, I’d get the rose garden outside our common home. That’s what I was working towards.
Did I miss the sex? Honestly I wasn’t having that much before to feel that it was such a big vacuum. There’s an intimacy in feeling held by someone. In being able to ask someone to call you, say that you miss them, miss their voice, or want to see their face. There’s a sense of lovingness when someone calls you repeatedly to talk to you, feels good about making you laugh, remembers tiny details about your work, family, friends and pets. I had that intimacy in this relationship and I wouldn’t have traded it for any amount of sex or red roses. Our time together would come.
I was waiting for the day he and I would go on a holiday somewhere. Or I’d meet his friends. Or his family.
It was then I found out that he’d texted an ex. Worse, he was in town while I was away and he lied to me about it.
It felt like the world had just stopped, or crashed. But something dramatic. He was busy with work (or fixing his excuses) for half the day. When we finally spoke properly he said his intention wasn’t to sleep with his ex.
I believed him.
But now that we were discussing the relationship, could he show up for it?
I could no longer lie (to myself) that everything in the relationship was hunky dory.
So I told him that I needed him to make an effort, to introduce me to his friends and family and that whole jazz. To let me be a part of his universe. How difficult could that be? We had been together for over 3 years, so that did mean that he wanted me in his life, right?
I realised that the timing was not great (wasn’t it?).
But I figured he would say “I will do all of this, just give me 2-3 months”
But he didn’t.
A year before this, when his work and life were getting hectic he suggested that if I wanted I could leave. I chose to stay. Because you don’t leave because things are rough. You see it through.
This time, when I told him that if the relationship has to go anywhere he needed to introduce me to his family and friends, I guess I expected him to choose the relationship.
And that’s what hurts. That he didn’t make the effort for me. BTW, work and home issues mysteriously got sorted months after we broke up.
I saw the work my ex put into his day. In his work, and in his interests outside of work, and I assumed that I’d get the benefit of that too. Isn’t that also how love works?
May be after all these years it wasn’t love to him. He never said the words. I never pushed him. He will say it if he wants to and if he doesn’t what will a hollow “I Love You” mean anyway? I would think.
I wish I had pushed. I wish I had got the flowers and the gifts. Because now that the relationship is over, and I no longer have the voice and the messages, there would have been something left to tell me that I wasn’t entirely a fool to believe it was a relationship.
Looking back, at this and other relationships, I wonder why I let the lack of effort slide.
At the risk of hurting my parents, I am going to point the needle at them to start with. Kids from the 90s joke that our parents never bothered as much as today’s parents do, with their kids. They have them and then hand them over to the elder siblings. I can vouch for it. It never affected me growing up, but leaving home sometimes lets you see life from a different lens, and articulate things, even if only to your own self, that you wouldn’t otherwise.
There’s lots of times my parents showed up for me. A lot of who I am today is possible because of who they let me become and who they were themselves. But there was a day when told by an elder that he still was responsible for me, my father bowed his head and said “I don’t think I do.” I feel bad for him. I feel bad for me. And I feel bad for the child I was that had to witness this.
I wonder then, if I keep fixating on men who will turn around and choose me, make an effort, stay a little bit longer only because I want them to.
We live in a world where everything from groceries to washing machines get delivered to the doorstep. Work can happen from home. It’s easy to meet friends once a few months or text a bit and imagine that the relationship is alive and kicking. It’s easier to find a new relationship than to fix one…
Had we had terrible fights, said horrible things to each other I would have understood not wanting to try and get back. To fix things or even meet once, just to see one other for one last time. But none of that is true. We shared something warm and true – and I wondered why it hadn’t mattered enough to choose.
It’s been over a year, and he hasn’t called once. In the absence of someone wanting you back in the relationship you wonder if all the emotion was just on you. May be some of the effort I am looking for is also post break-up. To remind me, at least once, that I wasn’t alone. I am not the only one hurting. And even if I was the only one in love, I wasn’t the only one who cared.
Now that I recognise somewhat what effort might mean to me, I wonder if I will have the courage to look for and demand it in the next relationship.
Is that how love works?
Samiksha dreams of deep blue seas
