FA2: The story as it began... and how it ended.

OK, so, where to begin? I've spoken about FA2 before, but I am not sure I ever told the entire story. I started writing this post ages ago, in order to try and sort out the details in my mind because KfW2 was asking about her/us.

I only met her after she'd been introduced to me by BW. This was a few years before anything happened and while I'd been invited to parties hosted by her, I'd never gone. She started coming out more, socially, with BW. She had separated from her husband for, let's just say, reasons that are not the usual ones. She'd been interested in me for a while, I think, though obviously hadn't done anything because she was married. She'd not actually said so much after we hooked up, but I think it was obvious and I'm fucking clueless with women, so if I noticed, it must have been obvious.

However, the night we first hooked up, I was actually trying it on with FA1 and only pulled back from that because she had recently started dating the bloke who would eventually become her husband. Go figure!

Anyway... after a shaky start for a couple of months (which involved the odd hook-up and me being generally clueless), we dated for well over two years. Well, I say "dated", but in this day and age, Facebook would decree that we were "in a relationship". All the while, FA2 had some issues. For a start, her parents never, ever shut up about grandkids. Never. Every single conversation that FA2 had with her mother had mentioned kids. This is not an exaggeration. Whether by accident or design, serious conversations with FA2 had a tempo which was decided by the ticking of her biological clock.

Don't get me wrong. I was in love with FA2, but my own circumstances meant that I wasn't in a position to talk about the things she wanted to talk about for another few years. I could have, but ultimately I think it would have been pointless trying to make those kinds of plans for four years in the future.

In addition, she was in the middle of a divorce. It wasn't the world's messiest one, but it still screwed with her head.

It got to a point where FA2 would have a mini-breakdown every five or six weeks or so. It was never anything obvious and only something that I would notice, given that we were practically living together by this stage. So much so that after a few months of this, I sat her down and gave her a good talking to.

We decided, after a lot of talking, that she needed a break - a complete break - from her family, from the divorce, from, well, everything really. I suggested travel - head away somewhere for a few months, take a mini-career break and just clear her head and enjoy herself, put the stresses of her divorce, her family and stuff behind her and gain perspective.

And she did. She handed in her notice at work, made all the arrangements and took herself off, though while I had made the suggestion with a 3 - 6 month trip in mind, she quit her job totally and made plans for 12 months. She had no ideas of her own, though... it was me who suggested where to go, what she might do/accomplish etc. Somewhat naively I distanced myself a little from her. Part of her going away was to get her head together and us trying to maintain a relationship from over 5000 miles away could have gotten in the way of that, in my opinion, and I thought, hers.

Ultimately, that's probably where it all fell apart. I maintained contact, friendly, but not overly emotional which was less a deliberate decision and more about who I was at the time. She'd been gone a few months when Xmas rolled round. We had a few telephone conversations and had planned lots of IRC/MSN chat as a cheaper option, except she couldn't get internet access.

She'd been hinting that I would go out and visit her and while she was somewhere I very much wanted to go (remember, I had made all the suggestions, so in essence, she was living my plans), I simply didn't have the time or money. I tried to explain, but she either didn't understand or believe me, I guess.

A few months after that was when she met someone else and entered into another relationship. I didn't know this at the time... it was many, many months after that before she decided to tell me. In fact, it was only when she let me know that she wasn't returning home as planned and was staying where she was that this all came out. That was a car crash of a few months for me.

So, in a few (very expensive) phone calls, I tried to get to the bottom of what was going on. She said that she'd come to the conclusion that we were over as a couple because of two things: a throwaway email I’d sent that she misinterpreted and the non-arrival of a card to celebrate our anniversary.

Rather than ask outright, she chose to make an assumption. The story didn't really add up to me, though. The email thing and the card thing happened months apart and it's not as if everything suddenly happened at once. But, we talked through it over a week or so and snatched phone calls when finances and time differences allowed. Then she dropped the bombshell... she was coming home soon, but not permanently... just for a holiday, then she would return and start seeing about emigrating.

It was a rough plan that she'd only started thinking about, she said, but my reaction to her news had given her something to think about, and we'd sit down and talk about it when she came home. That was eight weeks from that phone call.

The next eight weeks were tough for me. I had a lot going on in my life at that point anyway, and I really didn't need the distraction. A week before she was due to come home, I tried to make arrangements. I took some time out the day we were due to meet so that we could spend an entire afternoon talking, if needed. She refused and said that an evening would be enough, but she agreed to meet early in the evening, to give us a good few hours talking before we were due to meet friends, including AM and QC1.

So, we went out for food, and we talked. We talked a lot. Then we left and went to a quiet bar to continue the chat. On the way up the road, she took my hand. She looked at me and told me softly that I still hadn't said "it". "It" was "I love you". It had been a bugbear of hers before she'd originally left and she'd always maintained that I'd never said it to her. I had, though. Admittedly, too little, too infrequently and started too long into the relationship, but it was said... and it was true.

However, she meant that I hadn't said it that night. I told her outright while I still did, I still had my concerns that the conversation that we were having was all for nothing, that her desire to emigrate meant that it didn't matter what had or hadn't happened between us, that was what was important to her. I told her that it was my opinion that she wasn't about to completely change whatever plans she'd had simply because I did or didn't say three words and that despite her protests, I'd said them to her before. Then she kissed me. Passionately.

We continued the conversation, slowly but surely covering ground that we should have done over the previous year until AM and QC1 arrived. FA2 was always very fond of AM and QC1, so they unsurprisingly disappeared for a girly chat. Part of it was a catching-up exercise, but part of it was talking about me. AM grabbed me later that night and told me that whatever it was I'd said to her, it was the right thing and that she was very confused. She still loved me and her initial reason for meeting with me that night was simply to get closure and hopefully give me some... but old feelings had resurfaced and, in FA2's eyes, she'd seen how much I'd grown as a person in the time she was gone.

And it was true, I had... I had become a more confident person at the very least. AM and QC2 stayed for a while, then invented excuses to leave and let FA2 and myself continue/complete our conversation. I bought some more drinks and then told FA2 the three words she wanted to hear. She kissed me again. When the bars closed in the early hours of the morning, we went back to mine and sat drinking vodka and talking some more. By this time, the serious conversation was pretty much over, we'd both said what we wanted to say. FA2 needed some time to think things over. She was due to stay in the UK for a couple of weeks, visiting family etc. so it was my assumption that this would be ample time.

We were sat on the sofa, at 4AM, watching a video of mine... probably something sci-fi. FA2 snuggled up to me "because she was cold", which lasted about two minutes before she started kissing me again... except this time it went beyond that. Before it got to actual intercourse but was long after we were both naked, she stopped suddenly. She can't do it, she said, it would be unfair.

Unfair to whom? I didn't ask. I think I knew. We dressed in silence, she kissed me again, told me she'd be in touch and left. She went AWOL for the next two weeks and I phoned her a few days after she left the country again. She was apologetic. What came next was no surprise... when she left me, she returned home. It was true that I had really given her something to think about, but ultimately, she was starting to get into the relationship with a new bloke (the two AWOL weeks were her visiting/being introduced to his family)  and the emigration thing was very important to her. I had certainly told her that I had assumed the emigration thing was big. We talked for a while, and then I wished her good luck. I was devastated. A few days later, QC2 called and offered to take me out, and although we'd been friends for years, I think this really brought us together, which is at least one positive.

It's not the last time we spoke nor is it the last time we actually met. I did eventually find, a few years later, the time and money to do the things I wanted to do, and when I was in FA2's new neck of the woods, I got in touch. I met the other bloke, who seemed nice enough, but in the few weeks we shared a city and went out a few times for dinner and drinks, I found out that things weren't exactly what I had been told.

For starters, this bloke had been pursuing FA2 pretty much as soon as she turned up to the hostel, literally days after leaving me. That, before the misunderstood email, they were sleeping together (or it was around that time) and that before our anniversary came round (so before anything had a chance to arrive), they were moving in together. That before FA2 called me to tell me she wasn't coming home, they'd already started the emigration process and were making significant financial commitments together – buying a car together, for example. There were a few other things said that simply didn't add up to what I had been told.

It was around that time that I decided to give up on FA2. There wasn't any real anger, just tiredness about it all. It had just confirmed some logic/gut feelings I'd had at the time. I don't think FA2 considers it to be cheating, I think in her head, she’s rationalised it all. She might even believe the stories/timeline she told me. But FA2 was someone I believed would never cheat on ANY partner, not just me and it's always saddened me how a relationship that had lasted nearly three years (when she left the country... I guess you could add a further nine months to that if you want to count the total amount of time I thought I was in a relationship).

And in the year she had been gone, I had turned down other women. FBS was practically putting it on a plate on the night of her own leaving do, for example.

Since then, contact has been brief, irregular and usually instigated by FA2 when she wants something. Any time I'd tried to have a conversation with her (my excitement at the potential with RB was a prime example), she simply wasn't interested. It was all small-talk as a prelude to asking for a favour.