My boyfriend went away for the weekend without me, which was no big deal. He said he just needed to get out of the city and be with his buddies. While I had a bad feeling about it, it ended up being so much worse than I could’ve imagined.
- Things had felt off for a while. He suggested going away for the weekend at the worst time in our relationship. Things hadn’t been right for a few weeks, which made me more apprehensive. It was more of a feeling that things were going sour between us than anything concrete, so I tried to convince myself I was being paranoid and be chill bout it.
- I wanted to fix things but he wanted to get away without me. I’d been hoping to get away for the long weekend with my boyfriend, maybe to a gorgeous glamping location or to a nature reserve so we could reconnect and chill. Our schedules were hectic and that was just making it feel like it was harder to really connect. I felt a bit dissed when he said he wanted to get out of the city with his friends. What about me? I could’ve also done with a break! Besides, that totally screwed up my plans of wanting to organize quality time with him.
- I had to let it go. I couldn’t fight with him about it—that would be crazy. I tried to tell myself that maybe time apart could be a good thing. It would make us miss each other, or at least I hoped so. At the back of my mind, I always had the fear that he’d take time away from me and realize that he didn’t want to be with me, but I tried to squash it. It was just one damn weekend!
- I expected our usual texting behavior. I thought that we’d carry on chatting via text the way we always did. We spoke daily, but now that he was out of town, the texting whittled down to hardly anything. I know that can happen because it’s impossible to be glued to your phone when you’re supposed to be spending time with your friends, but it just felt wrong.
- As much as I hate to admit it, I chased him. I took on the role of being the communication initiator. The thing is, I wasn’t trying to control the guy or get in the way of his weekend away with his friends. I just missed him and wanted to connect. It was a five-day long weekend and it felt like ages without him. I didn’t realize that my desperate need to get in touch with him and know what was happening during his time away was actually a sign that something was wrong with our relationship.
- I couldn’t be chill. Friends who saw me check my phone for my boyfriend’s messages every 10 minutes looked at me like I was a psycho. “It’s just a few days,” they said, ordering me another tequila. “Enjoy yourself a bit. He’s doing that and so should you.” I just couldn’t seem to chill because I feared that he was having too much fun without me. It’s not normal to have so much fear. In the past, boyfriends had gone away for weekends or longer and I’d been fine.
- Then came the wakeup call. After a whole day of not hearing from my boyfriend and suffering while he ignored my texts, I’d had enough, so I called him. I was expecting him not to answer his phone because he’d been AWOL, so you can imagine how shocked I was when a woman answered. WTF? I panicked and hung up the phone. What the hell was a woman doing answering my boyfriend’s phone at eight o’clock at night? Where were they? What were they doing? I knew I’d drive myself crazy with all these questions, so I called back to find out what was going on.
- He didn’t think it was weird at all. Once she answered, a guy’s voice could be heard in the background. It was my boyfriend, I was sure of it. He asked her who it was and she told him my name. I could hear a rustling sound and assumed he was taking the phone from her. “Hello?” he asked, as though I were a stranger. My boyfriend sounded so weird and uncomfortable. I played it cool, asking how his weekend was going and his replies were very tame. He gave me a lot of one-word answers.
- He refused to say he loved me. At the end of the call, when I told him I loved him, he didn’t reply. Something was seriously screwed up and his lack of affection towards me really pissed me off. I asked him what was going on and why he couldn’t say it back, but he made lame excuses about being tired. He wouldn’t tell me who had answered the phone, and it was clear she was right there listening. I eventually just hung up on him.
- He didn’t call back and soon after, he was no longer my boyfriend. He didn’t give a crap that I was upset. He didn’t get back to me until he returned home, and he picked a fight with me about how unreasonable I’d been to lose my cool. What? Although we tried to work through things, I just couldn’t deal and knew he was lying to me. What an a-hole!
