Not-a-break-up
“I don’t know what I’d do if you got a girlfriend.”
I can still remember that conversation – sitting in a pub in our hometown a couple of years ago.
It was my way of drawing an even tighter circle around our exclusive little world. He and I didn’t go out with each other, but we were very close in a lot of ways and I was keen to keep it that way.
I prided myself on being the ‘special one’ – the one he confided in, the only one who really understood him, the one who drew him out of himself and so on and so on. I was also confident that, because we weren’t together, it would never end.
Go on, guess what happened? The inevitable – he went and got a girlfriend.
She hates me of course. No, that’s not fair, I don’t think she hates me at all – if she does she’s very private about it, because whenever we meet she’s chatty and friendly. But she does hate the idea of this girl who’s been around forever and has all this history with her new boyfriend.
Dealing with the gap
Everyone told me not to compete, so I didn’t.
He and I went from being brother and sister (albeit slightly incestuous) to nothing. No phone calls, texts, certainly no visits. It’s all just gone.
I haven’t cried about it – except for one drunken episode at Christmas – I haven’t shouted or screamed or stamped my feet. I’d like to say I haven’t even noticed, except I clearly have, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it.
There’s just an absence. Someone who was once there isn’t anymore.
It makes me grateful I didn’t invest more than I did in him.
It makes me embarrassed for how much I talked up our friendship - “We’re best friends, we’ll never be parted, we can talk to each other about anything etc etc etc” – when it can’t even withstand this.
It also – strangely – has made me relieved. Turns out I didn’t need him in order to function, because I’m still here and still doing ok.
The other woman
I realise the ‘other woman’ position never commands a lot of sympathy, but it does hurt. I have absolutely no idea what to do. It’s like he’s died, and I don’t know how to bring him back to life. Maybe I should be accepting that what we had was actually more like a relationship and concentrate on getting over the break up.
I want to take her and shake her and point out that encircling him and her in a private little world, restricting his freedom and his access to other people, by whatever means, will do nothing to strengthen them in a world where you have to interact with people.
I want to tell her that because that’s what I did. And look where it’s got me.
Written by Daisy Doonan.
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