Breakups, Breakups, Breakups …
List the People Who Have Broken up with You
Well … we might be here a while. In case you’re wondering what I’m doing, I started a little ‘series’ of sorts when I came across a book of lists in Amsterdam. I started answering the questions/suggestions it was giving and here we are now – listing the people who have broken up with me.
As I said, we might be here for some time …
I remember my first real heartbreak – the first boy who ever broke my heart – being the guy who I started dating at the young ol’ age of 16. My first boyfriend didn’t break my heart – Number 1 – I knew we were over, and I’m pretty sure it was me who did all the dumping. But Number 2 was something special to me. He was older, had a car, was beautiful, and he’d just started the sign-up process to go into the RAF. As far as I was concerned, he was the best thing I could have ever gotten my hands on. I was 16, still at school, and had a little part-time job in a fast-food joint.
We dated for about 10 or 11 months until he broke my heart. He cheated on me, and his best friend – Number 3 (also known as The Bad Memory) made me aware of it. He took me to a pub, got me blind-drunk, carried me home, and then apparently had sex with me. I have absolutely no recollection of the event or any of the events of that night. I remember being really drunk in the bar, and then being sick outside the bar, and then everything else is a blank until I woke up the next afternoon.
I didn’t tell Number 2 any of this, obviously. Instead, I begged him to give us another chance. I knew he’d cheated, even though he was still vehemently denying it, but I didn’t want to give him up yet. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. It had been my first serious experience of betrayal, and I didn’t handle it in the best ways.
A sign of many things to come, it would seem.
We argued via text message and heated phone calls for a few days, him away in his RAF barracks and me at home with my Nan. I remember being sat on the floor with my head in my Nan’s lap, sobbing my poor little heart out over this boy who’d spectacularly broken my heart. He didn’t just cheat on me, he dumped me also. In the worst of ways.
I was like a woman possessed, showing my crazy-lady interior at just 16 years of age, and I went out to get blind drunk as often as I could, flirting and smooching with as many boys as I could. It was at that point I met the next big chapter in my life, Number 5 – The Fireman. Bizarrely, I went on to cheat on Number 5 with Number 2, and I got caught.
Did I learn my lesson? No.
Did I cheat again? Yes.
But that was my first ever REAL breakup – Number 2. It was brutal. I remember crying for days and not getting over him for weeks. I learned from a very early point that it was easier to get over someone if you already had the next lad lined up, and that became my life for a long time — an endless array of hopeless men and even more hopeless relationships.
*****
Fast forward two years and I was 18 years old and working in a pub. I’d made the catastrophic mistake of getting into a relationship with a married man and I should probably talk about this in more detail at some point. He was a soldier boy – Number 25 – The Married Guy.
Did I love him? I don’t know, maybe? I was 18 years old and drunk a lot of the time. I did work full-time in a pub, after all. We had a pretty on/off affair, something to be expected really considering I found out he was married. I don’t even think we dated for that long, 6 or 7 months, perhaps? It was more an infatuation thing than a love thing. It was around the time I realised I had a real thing for older men; he was about 15 years old than me. It was also around the same time I met My. Mr. Grey (Number 27) and Number 24 – The Older Guy.
Everyone warned me of The Married Guy. Of course they did; everyone knew he was married. He gave me so many excuses about why he and his wife shouldn’t be together, and also why they couldn’t break up. All the usual cliches, those were the lines he spun me. And I believed them, each and every one of them. Of course I did because I was 18 and he was my first married man. I was meant to fall for every line.
I remember the day we were meant to meet in that pub. 2 pm on Sunday. I’d gotten dressed up. I knew he was going to tell me he would be going away with work for a while and I think I expected him to call it off. I’d half prepared myself for that, even though I truly believed he would tell me “see ya later” rather than “goodbye”.
The fact that he said neither of those things – he just didn’t show up – broke my heart. Tore it in half. I wasn’t even worth a goodbye? Really? Everything that everyone else had said to me was the truth. He was a con artist, a typical married man who was having some seedy and sordid affair, and he would never leave his wife. He still hasn’t left his wife, for the record, to this day. I’ve since found the happy couple on Facebook and they’re still very much together and “in love”. I wonder how many more little infidelities he’s had since me. I refuse to believe I was the only one.
*****
Number 18 – The Postman – he broke up with me too. In fact, he was never really mine to break up from, with him being engaged to another woman the entire time we were dating and all. Again, we lasted for about 10 months or so before I found out he’d been lying to me all along, and I went crazy that time too. Totally crazy. Like, 10/10 crazy. I burned everything he left in my flat, and I threw his passport away. Just threw it in the trash. Fuck him. Because of me, he couldn’t go on a stag weekend to Prague and I don’t feel bad about it in the slightest. Fuck him again. He shouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave his stuff at mine and then let me find out he’d been cheating for ten months straight. He was engaged, for fuck’s sake. He lived with this woman. He didn’t just live with this woman – his fiancee – he lived with her parents too! I often wonder what excuses he gave to them to explain away the nights he spent at mine.
Number 22 – The Copper – he dumped me. I really liked him and I often thought we might have gone somewhere if he hadn’t kicked me to the kerb. I never really knew why he’d ditched me. He just did. He just stopped calling and at the time, I was led to believe it was because he was a 26-year old policeman and I was an 18-year old barmaid and he wanted something better. He wanted to settle down and have a family and I wasn’t the girl he could do that with.
The next girl he dated was a 19-year-old barmaid and they’re now married with 104 kids. Ish.
I guess I just wasn’t the right 18/19-year-old barmaid, huh?
I remember Number 20 – The Oh-My-God Guy dumping me. He was “too chavvy” and I was too “grungy” and we made an odd-looking couple. That’s why he dumped me. Those were his actual words.
Number 24 – The Older Guy – he dumped me too. In fact, he just ghosted me. I was 19 years old, I think, and we dated for 7 or 8 months. He ghosted me before ghosting was cool and I will never forgive him for that. I can’t really remember how or what happened when we broke up, but I remember taking him clubbing one night and realising I was out with a total dad. It wasn’t long after that I learned he’d gotten another woman pregnant, so I guess we weren’t as exclusive as I thought we were. It’s funny how I never knew that at the time.
Big Love … Well, you all know the story of what happened there. That’s where I started my little blog, and you know all of the breakups since then.
I’ve broken up with a lot of men, but I HATE it when people break up with me. I really hate it. It’s the worst. But out of all of the breakups, even the really awful ones, I think I can still speak for everyone when I say an honest breakup is better than a cheating, lying, and deceitful breakup every time. I can handle not being someone’s cup of tea. I can’t handle being someone’s garlic bread. I’m definitely no side order.
So yeah, cheers for that little depressing blast from the past.
Breakups, breakups, breakups …
Want to read the other posts for the book of lists? You’ll find them here —
Worst. Dates. Ever.
Best. Dates. Ever. (Tag, You’re It)
It All Started With A Kiss
My Unicorn
Forgive Me For I Have Sinned
Featured image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
