In the months since the breakup, the amount of times I’ve ended up sleeping with my ex has me quite puzzled. While the ratio is low, thankfully, I’m still wondering how they happened to begin with. The first started easily enough not long after our break up over a comment of how I looked in my sports bra at the time. After pandering for a second go around for weeks, we ended up sleeping together again closer to me finally moving out. Both times he was adamant that ‘his relationship was poly and it was all okkaayyy’ with his new girlfriend.
The girlfriend he had been seeing before he had broken up with me, mind you.
Or at least it was ok in his mind. We lived together. The chemistry was there. You don’t magically lose that after 8 years in just a few weeks. It wasn’t real if we were in close proximity…right?
In the summer months after our break up, we met for lunch. We had been living in separate apartments for over a month when I wanted a professional opinion about a networking opportunity I had. Or so I told myself. Truth be told I missed my best friend (which led to a few other instances of us hooking up). After lunch he casually suggested going back to his place to have sex. To be really honest, now weeks later, I can’t fully remember most of that conversation but I do recall being surprised about his forwardness yet shrugging it off- it was in his nature after all. He was always overly cocky.
That day I held back as I had other errands to run and homework to do. But there was some teasing in the text that followed afterwards that day. And a few days later after a terribly boring date that happened to take place not far from my exes home that I conveniently needed to um…. charge my phone and use his bathroom. Or so I said.
When I arrived he offered me a beer. We caught up about school and each other lives until suddenly we were making out. And then we were in our old bedroom.
Afterwards we talked more outside as he smoked and I watched a bus timer get so progressively slower, it had to have been going backwards. By then he had 2 beers that I knew of, me at 1 1/2 but both pretty sober.
Even know, although it’s now closer to a year since the breakup, I’ve had a hard time getting myself to write the most traumatic event of our breakup. I try. I stare at the words and visualize all of the events that took place. I attempt to start a sentence but my heart starts to hurt and the words seem to leave me behind. What happened left me angry at him for so long. It made my heart cold enough to never consider letting anyone in ever again. Yet somehow at the same time I was so lonely, I cried myself to sleep wishing for just one person to tell me I was wrong for feeling the way I did.
Our conversation continued as text as I took a lyft home. It was well beyond midnight at this point- my date had ended four hours earlier. He texted me that he felt bad; that he had actually liked the girl he was seeing- the one he cheated on me with.
I told him he had a cheating problem.
He made me promise to not tell her.
I asked him if he ever felt bad about what he did to me.
I never promised to not tell her about how he’s cheated on every girl he’s dated.
But in reality, I imagined doing nothing but telling her off and letting her know full well that her relationship isn’t what it seems. I wanted to remind her she wasn’t that special- that everyone who becomes the mistress thinks that guy is their happily ever after- and it never, ever is.
And yet somehow, I suck up all the misery and pain and swallow it like everything else I’ve gone through. I don’t tell anyone, even her. I’m not quite sure if that’s a mistake or not yet.
Advertisements Share this:
