We haven’t spoken since that afternoon, and honestly, it is breaking me into a gazillion pieces. I don’t know what to do with my life now. I don’t think about her every single day, but when she crosses my mind, it’s nerve-racking how much space she still occupies in there. I sit and I ask myself over and over if I was right to react the way I did. Was I right to scream “Leave my house,” to hurl her bags and throw her out the door? Maybe my anger got in the way of ending things amicably, but how else was I supposed to end something that had already ended before it even began?
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I caught her cheating exactly four months after we started dating. She was flirting, and it wasn’t with just anybody. It was with her ex-boyfriend. In the text messages, they talked about what could have been, what should have been, and they spent hours reminiscing about the days when they were together. As new as the relationship was, it made me wonder what could have pushed her to the edge to the point where cheating felt like her only option. I carried that question around with me like a stone in my chest.
For days, she called and begged. “It was the devil. I didn’t know what came over me when I cheated on you,” she kept saying. And because I loved her, and because human beings make mistakes, I forgave her. I made her promise never to do that to me again. I really believed her.
When it happened again, I convinced myself that maybe she needed stricter boundaries and more accountability, so I linked her WhatsApp to my laptop. If being watched was what it would take for her to stop, I was willing to do it. But she found out I was monitoring her, and instead of stopping, she created another account so she could continue doing what she was doing. When I discovered it, we broke up. It hurt me deeply, but I learned to live without her even though I still loved her. Even then, I continued supporting her whenever she needed money because I understood that campus life can be difficult sometimes. I couldn’t just switch off my care for her.
A month later, she reached out. She said she missed me. “I am sorry for hurting you the way I did. I didn’t deserve to hurt you the way I did.” She proposed that we get back together, and she left a long paragraph explaining how sorry she was and how much she wanted another chance. I called her, and we had a long conversation that night, a very long and honest conversation. I told her, “My life has been very peaceful since you left, and if you are coming back, then you have to help me maintain that peace.” I told her I still loved her and was willing to take her back, but only if she stopped doing the things that had caused our fights in the first place. She agreed. Then I specifically asked her to cut off communication with the guy who had been at the center of our problems. She agreed to that too. We promised to do things differently and picked up the relationship from where we had left off.
The weekend we reconciled and settled our differences, she was in my house. Wearing bum shorts and one of my T-shirts, she sat comfortably on the couch. She cooked, we ate, we laughed, and we talked about everything she had missed during the breakup. I looked at her and felt peace, an almost unsettling kind of peace that I couldn’t explain.
On Sunday, we were supposed to go to church, but we ended up having our own version of church in my room. Our hearts felt light, full of grace and hope. It was in the afternoon that everything changed. I found a number saved on her phone as “My Love,” and it definitely wasn’t my number. She claimed it was her mother’s number. I went through her WhatsApp and found she was still doing voice calls and video calls with the guy who made us fight. I then tried finding their chats, but they were nowhere to be seen. I needed a poassword to unlock their chats.
She refused to give me the password at first, but later changed the narrative to, “I’ve forgotten it.” I told her, “If you don’t give me the password, you leave my house immediately.”
I then forced her out. I held her hands and bags and dragged them out by force. I refused to look at her face because I believed if I dared, it would soften my resolve, so I just kept my eyes away from hers. She resisted at first, then she gave up and allowed me to push her out of the room. I think a part of her knew she had run out of excuses.
We haven’t spoken since then. I pick up the phone and expect her call, but I don’t see it. I want to call her, but I can’t. I feel hurt, but just a little bit. Was I right to react the way I did? Was it right for me to drive her out of the house? From my understanding, if you genuinely love someone and want the relationship to work, then you have to be willing to let go of everything that causes chaos in the relationship. She wasn’t willing to let go, so I had to let go of her.
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I feel like calling her to beg her to come back, but I can’t. It’s not about ego or pride. This time around, I’m not putting my strength into fighting battles that aren’t worth my energy. It’s better to be single than be in a relationship that robs me of my peace, right? That’s what we have been preaching, right? But what about the matters of the heart?
—Frank
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