GONE BOY: PART 1

I’ve started to plan my exit, my exit from this unhappy relationship that has become distant and unbearable to be part of. I first wanted to walk away four months ago when I discovered that my boyfriend of five years, Martin, was secretly planning a romantic-sex filled weekend to Birmingham with his lover Anton. Five months on I am questioning why I forgave and decided to stay on in the relationship. I thought things could change between us and with five years between us, a new flat, shared friends and family it seemed better to stick with it than to lose everything. But now, more than ever I am prepared to walk away and give up everything for the sake of my own sanity. I feel fucked up, emotionally drained and I can’t continue in a relationship that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Looking back, I can’t pin-point when we started to drift apart. It may have been a consequence of the open relationship we had led and agreed on a year prior. What started as a ‘let’s explore our sex life with a threesome’ continued with separate one-on-one hook-ups. But we had agreed that this wouldn’t and shouldn’t come between our relationship so there was no concern on my part to continue being committed to the man I loved and I truly felt I could share my life with this person. Yes there we times when we got annoyed and bickered about small stuff such as who would cook dinner or who would house chores but those little things seem insignificant as we would soon made up.

Things started to change when he befriended Anton – what I thought was an innocent friendship, because his intentions where to make new friends to go out hang out with and hang out, I certainly didn’t feel threaten at the time and I felt it would be good for him to also have his own space and mates to hang out with. Little did I know that there was more to the bromance and I started to become suspicious of his constant iPhone use and regular texts to Anton. He became inseparable from his phone and stopped sharing his usual nuances when talking about his friends or guys he fancied on grindr. He would always comment and ask for my opinion “Look at this guy, what do you think?” But now it was different and the conversation between us started to dry up. Perhaps I’m not the best communicator and sometimes two people in love and in synch don’t need words to express feeling but literally it felt like we didn’t have much to talk about. I felt his friendship with Anton was getting in the way of our relationship; he would go out of his way to make plans and see Anton whenever he was in town, I didn’t mind at first because he wanted to go out a bit more. Most of our weekends were spent staying in so as to save money (me in particular) and I think it bothered him that I was still paying credit card debt and I didn’t feel like going out as often. It wasn’t until he started to position himself differently on the sofa so I couldn’t see his screen or changing Anton’s name on the phone book so it read ‘Andrea’ when a message came in and the constant buzzing of his phone at night while he was asleep that I began to question the friendship and the type of conversations he was having with this guy who I’d yet to meet. The constant texting continued and I had to do something as it started to drive me crazy. In the four and half years that we had been together I had not felt the need to tap into his phone and look at his conversations. I felt I could trust him and he had always been open about who he was talking to and I could see who it was that he was chatting to when we sat next to each other on the sofa, but now I had an itch to find out more.

Late one night while he lay asleep I decided to end that curiosity and find out for myself what exactly it was that he was trying to keep from me. I’d known the pin to his iPhone as I had seen him type it in earlier in the day so unlocking it wasn’t an issue. It was an impulsive decision, he was becoming withdrawn, silent and distracted by his texts from Anton and grindr. I was hurt by what I discovered, my own fault I know but I realised then that the man I had fallen in love with wasn’t the same person. I discovered more romantic messages and pet name calling such as ‘baby’ and here I was thinking that ‘baby’ was solely reserved for me? Calling someone ‘babes’ I could have lived with, but this was more direct. As I quickly panned downed the exchange of messages I saw messages ending with ‘Love you’ and others that started with ‘I miss you’, “What the fuck?” I thought. Martin was having a romantic affair with this guy and was deceiving me right behind my back. I didn’t ‘know if what had started as an innocent friendship had become sexual yet.

I felt let down, partly feeling guilty for not spotting it sooner, how could I have let our relationship come to this? In the haste of me skimming through the exchange of texts Martin woke up and realised his phone was missing from his bedside table and came looking for it where I was in the spare bedroom. I confronted him there and then for a full explanation to his romantic exchanges and he quickly dismissed it as friendly banter and to get off his case. I couldn’t sleep that night, I wanted to know more and I knew Anton had a boyfriend too so how did his boyfriend feel about it too? Martin’s friendship with Anton no longer confided to our ‘open relationship’ rules. He’d let his emotion get on the way and was falling for someone else. If I ever did hook up with anyone else it would purely be for a sexual gratification that I wanted fulfilled, I didn’t seek it often because the person who I wanted the most was my boyfriend who now showed little interest. I knew who I was in love with and I would have never let a random hook-up get in the way of my emotions. I had been hurt this way once before by an ex-boyfriend telling me he was in love with someone else. Was history repeating itself?

The weeks carried on but the sex with Martin dried up – I felt I wasn’t turning him on anymore and I became chronically insecure. I tried to get us to be a couple once again, focusing on the good trying to re-spark that ignition we once had. I still felt for him, I still cared; this man had a power over me. Nothing changed and he continued his constant use of his mobile, texting all the time and I decided to dig deeper; I became a detective. For my birthday he took me out to a really fancy restaurant in town and paid for the whole bill, I was chuffed and thought thing were on the up. A couple of days after my birthday Martin mentioned he had bought train tickets to see his Great-Aunt in Leicester. Fine I thought – he would usually go up to see her as she is frail and old and needed the company from time to time. We had been once before and we spent the weekend in Leicester with his great-Aunt sleeping in separate beds because that is how she placed us. For his subsequent visits I didn’t go because of my schedule and I didn’t want to go for this visit. It came to a surprise that he had already paid for his train tickets in advance as he would usually discuss his train time options with me. I didn’t think anything of it until one evening while he was in the shower I logged into this laptop to check that his train bookings were genuine. The train tickets were genuine alright but they were booked to a different destination. His great-Aunt doesn’t live in Birmingham? Unless she has moved in the last month without me knowing there must be something wrong here or was it a connecting train via Birmingham to Leicester? As I looked up the inbox I saw another email with the subject ‘Hotel reservation confirmation’, the cheeky bastard was lying to me. That same email confirmation had a forwarding flag to Anton. Bingo. The lying cunt was planning to spend three nights away with his lover. To make matters worse the booking for this weekend was made the day after my birthday!

I didn’t mention anything about the emails that I had read. I had to take a long walk that night as I was so enraged and emotionally hurt. I felt my relationship with Martin crumbling around me like old ruins and I needed to end with him. I question why he didn’t just end it before so he could run off with Anton if that’s what he wanted. I waited all week before his planned departure for him to own-up to his true destination. Yes it may seem that I was setting a trap but I wanted to hear it from him and be honest like we had done in the past. I did bring up a conversion about his great-Aunt to ask about his plans with her while in Leicester but he quickly dismissed them to say he’d make arrangements once there. My detective work continued and I happened to go through his bag pack only to find lube and condoms and stashed at the bottom of the bag was a black line plastic back with two sets of four packed aqua-blue diamond shaped pills that I came to realise were Viagra! My heart beat as fast as it had ever done right there and then. I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh because I was right all along.

I was heartbroken to see that my suspicions were true – in the process of investigation I had hurt myself even more by prying into Martin’s private life and now I wanted out. I asked myself why this was happening and tried to gauge some message from the universe? Perhaps it was a way of being told I need to be stronger and reassess my life. I made a decision to go along with his plan and not mention anything of what I had discovered while all along contemplating a break up. The weekend of his departure came, it was a Friday morning and I got ready for work as usual and so did he. I noticed that all week he’d been making himself look good; a fresh new haircut, a tan and man-escaping his nether regions while making it all seem like a routinely ritual. I knew his train was also in the morning so we would take the tube together towards Euston, him with his carry-on all ready for his ‘pretend quiet weekend with his great-Aunt’. He didn’t suspect I knew of his cunning plan and part of me hoped he would confess of his true destination before alighting and waving goodbye at Finsbury Park. I knew I had a choice to speak up but I didn’t, I carried on towards the West End knowing that our relationship was over. I would let him enjoy whatever dirty weekend he wanted and come Sunday I would message him to tell him I knew of his true location. Come Sunday it would over. Come Sunday this boy would be gone.