Open Letter To “Her”

You could be the one from before me. Or you could be a new one. You could even be another new one, even newer.

But wherever in the sequence you are, I want to talk to you, as one woman to another. NOT because I still want him,  I don’t. But because I know what he did to me and I would not wish that on anybody.

Me and him were together from 22nd January 2013, after 3 months of texting and talking for hours and hours on the phone daily.  We were together until the middle of April this year. Although, our relationship wasn’t “officially” terminated until the beginning of September, just a few weeks ago.

He ‘disappeared’ in March, after a few weeks of weirdness, erratic behaviour and “depression”. He just stopped texting.
But as far as I was aware, he was suffering from the worst depression of his life that had been building since the end of November. I was worried sick. As was his daughter.

But I didn’t give up on him. I knew what depression is like. I also knew what it felt like to emerge and find people gone. And I loved him. He loved me. It was the last thing he said on his last text on the morning of 7th March.

I already knew he could lie. I caught him out on one he’d told on his blog. Not a big one, but still a lie to all his boating friends. He half explained it away.

And when he told me he’d been to see a Dr about his depression, I knew he was lying then. I mean, do Drs ask men in their 40’s to “cough” while holding their testicles? He told me that was part of the examination!!

And they don’t hand you a double dose of anti-depressants to take there and then so it gets into your system quicker. That’s antibiotics, and I don’t think they even do that anymore.

And this lie was confirmed when I phoned the GP he was supposed to have registered with to let them know my concerns about him, only to be told he wasn’t registered.

But depression means you don’t think straight.

However, imagine how it felt to see his profile on Plenty of Fish ….my forever person, my boyfriend advertising himself using a photograph taken in my lounge the previous year. Actively describing himself differently to the man I knew and rejecting everything we had spent hours discussing.
Within 10 minutes of him seeing my message on whatsapp, that I knew, his profile disappeared.

All through his disappearance I kept messaging him. I recorded messages for him too. I swung from love and concern to confusion to outright despair….and he got all of it via msg. But that’s how our relationship had been….very close. Or so I had thought.

I grieved for him. It was as though he had died….can you imagine how it felt?
He had just gone. No goodbye, no explanation, nothing. He just went missing. Suddenly and very confusingly.

But I saw him reading my messages on whatsapp. I even got one meant for you, you know. He was letting you know he was on the bus, on his way to you. And while he was on his way to you, he was reading messages from me.
He tried to tell me it was a msg to his daughter.

He told me later he deleted my messages without reading them, but then made reference to things I had said.

And yes, I named and shamed him via email. I was in the middle of a mental breakdown. That he caused.
My family can tell you this. And when I realised he had lied to his daughter as well…..I saw red!
And as I said to the boaters…..I would want to know if I had someone so deceptive in my midst. He says I gloated …..I probably did. But he had pushed me to the edge of my sanity.

Then, in mid April, 6 weeks after he went silent, as I was about to give up trying to talk to him…literally minutes away from deleting him from my phone….he replies. Tells me he had a meltdown, tells me he is an empty shell with no emotions, no sex drive, just a shadow of a man. Tells me the man I knew doesnt exist anymore.

But my dad went through a breakdown as did one of my best friends and a college friend had a psychotic break whilst at my house many years ago so his words and situation did not phase me. And I knew he was still in there somewhere. But I wasn’t sure we had a basis anymore. He insisted we did. So we talked….daily on whatsapp. Sometimes for hours.

And when we felt a tension between us he agreed to meet “to clear the air” so I stayed with him on the boat at Coventry Basin for 2 nights at the beginning of May. The boat was a mess….filthy dirty. and he looked like shit. The depression story was believable.
And we talked. He told me his profile had been some sort of stupid stunt. It was the most pathetic excuse I had ever heard.

But he looked me in the eye and promised me there hadn’t been, nor would there be anyone else.

I didn’t know what to do. I loved the man he had been, you see. The man who texted me as soon as he awoke and then on and off through the day and spent a couple of hours of every day on the phone to me; the man who loved me and called me his forever person.

So he said from what he could see we had 3 choices – walk away, be friends or try and rebuild what we had while he got well….altho he couldnt promise. Well, neither could I. But I couldnt just walk away and I couldnt be just a friend so we agreed on the third option.
He said he would have been disappointed with anything else. And again he promised me no-one else while we went through this process.

And so we began trying to rebuild….at least that was how it started out. I was suffering from almost daily migraines that had started mid February…hemiplegic migraines that are like having a stroke….and it was really hard for me at times.

The week of my birthday at the end of May….silence again. Said he had “shit” to sort out, not boat related.

June and July came and went. No, he “wasn’t ready” for a visit, he wasnt up to talking on the phone. But daily…..apart from the odd time he said he had no signal….we chatted on whatsapp.

I flirted, we shared the day, there was even an occasional laugh to be had.
In July when he went on holiday with his daughter he sent me daily pictures of where they moored and we chatted more. He seemed a lot more like his old self. But still he never asked how I was. Isn’t that bizarre?

Then during the holiday he reached out to me…..he had run out of money. He was stuck where he was.

And I was a friend to him. His best friend, he said.

I tried everything and then some to pull him round from the stubborn stupid mindset he had got himself into. The “doing things his way”.

And just when I myself was recovering, my mum passed away. He was there for me then. He phoned me and we talked for 3 hours.  He was there for me in the following days.

I don’t actually know where/when he fitted you in, you know. New relationships take up time.
All his weirdness…..happened when he was in a certain area. Braunston way (where the one before me lives).
There were also hints back as far as November……..his ex might need him to do her shopping while she recovered from an op on her foot, for instance.
But there is no doubt you were ‘around’. You could be the ex before me, and that would make *so* much sense. It even explains some of the things that seemed odd from day 1.

After I told him I had had enough of him still holding me at arms length, I looked at his canal forum and saw he’d referred to you.

I was angry. Of course I was angry. But I wasn’t really surprised.

When he was missing I spent hours online……searching for a trace of him. We went down there and physically hunted for him, spent the night in the car. His daughter wanted me to go the following week to look again.

I scoured boating blog after boating blog hoping for a glimpse in a photo taken on the canal.

And my searching brought up some interesting things. Different names he had used, for instance. It seems the only time he used his real name online was during the time we were together. But he deleted his facebook profile in early march. Of course he did…..he had things to hide.

He had had 2 blogs, about his canal walks etc before he got the boat. Oddly both of them were “hacked” and disappeared early in our relationship.

And a massive….and I mean massive chunk of his life in the late 80’s/’early 90’s includes his multiple and detailed accounts/descriptions of things that simply DID NOT EXIST THEN and of events that there is just no record of.

Snopes is a very useful website indeed.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt too many times. Because? Well, because I loved him, because parts of it were believable and because the time we were together was just the best.

And breakdowns mean you aren’t yourself.

So, whoever you are….please, be aware. He can say what he likes, but the facts are the facts. I have a copy of every single text he sent me and I have a file with our entire whatsapp communications from start to finish, including photographs.

I can back up my experiences. I can prove things he said to me. You know he cannot do the same.

And someone from where he is, reads my blog every day. Sometimes they visit more than once a day. 
Sometimes, someone else from where he is  visits, but they try to hide the fact they were there. Is that you? Or him again on a different device?

It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to hide your visits. Neither does he, for that matter.
I have no idea why he would read my blog. I thought I had made it clear to him that he should keep away from me and mine. Although an explanation would have been nice. An apology too. But I don’t think he’s brave enough to make direct contact with me. He wasn’t brave enough to end our relationship.

But I think you should know the sequence of events. Deceit is deceit, when all’s said and done. And he isn’t as clever – or as good a liar – as he thinks he is. His timeline is pants, for instance. Sit down and think it through, write it out – you’ll see what I mean.

Whatever secret he has hidden under the “squirrel” stories, I don’t think anyone will ever know. The only conclusion I can draw is that it’s either a truth so pathetic or so awful that he is ashamed.

The absolute tragedy of this whole thing, though, is that I loved him as completely as it is possible to, and he could have told me the absolute truth at any time – it wouldn’t have made any difference.

And I wonder how many other women he has done this to? How many overlaps there have been. I started to post about him in April 2013……go see.

I didn’t deserve it, and I doubt you do too.

There ought to be a blacklist for people like him. Because unfortunately there are many like him.

So anyway, I thought you ought to know what actually happened. My blood runs cold at the thought of anyone else going through what I did.