The ache

At the start of lockdown my boyfriend of nearly seven years broke up with me completely out of the blue. The reason, somewhere along the line in the past year he’d fallen out of love with me. He’d not told me because he wanted to keep this to himself until he was ready to make a decision about his future. Only it was our future, my future too, somehow he didn’t feel my small voice or feelings would matter enough to tell me when things began to change. To feel he’d been pretending every time he said ‘I love you’ or spoke about our future was like a hole had been ripped open in me. Without sounding too much like the quote from Friends, this really was the person I used to think would never, ever hurt me. It had only ever been him. Every happy memory was now filled with questioning of if he’d really just been feeling empty. I felt as though overnight he’d changed completely and taken our memories with him. Less than three months later he’d moved on with someone from his work. I was still finishing the paperwork for the flat we had shared. I took my time, ached with the sadness of the breakup, and tried to move forwards. Six months on, the pretending of my own that I was fine to colleagues and friends over Zoom seemed to feel less contrived. Slowly I started to feel more like me. I dipped my toe back into dating with a few people. I have been seeing someone now for three months but in honest I feel as though I’m no better than my ex was. Playing the part of a girlfriend hoping that the feelings of a romance will emerge. He’s a good man and I want to be open enough to feel it all again. Yet, quietly I feel as though my heart has gone cold and I can’t thaw it out. I read the stories here of people falling so innocently and wholeheartedly for each other and it makes my heart ache a little that I feel so disconnected from this ideal love, hardened to it. Maybe it’s too overwhelming to hope for that right now when it feels like we’re all pretending a little that we’re doing fine.