I get dumped – for NOT being unfaithful

“I’ve been kind of dreading this call,” he said.

I groaned. But hadn’t I seen it coming? Hadn’t I been mentally rehearsing my break-up speech on the 12-hour flight home from Sri Lanka only a day earlier? Had I bought him a sweet but inexpensive souvenir gift that I could easily palm off on somebody else just in case we split up? Hadn’t I spilled my guts out to my friends on holiday about how his jealous streak was out of control, how I was tired of picking up the bill whenever we went out because he STILL hadn’t bothered to look for a job, how I didn’t think I would ever really forgive him for refusing to come to dinner on my birthday and meet my friends for the first time.

Yes, I’d done all of those things. But that’s not to say I didn’t cry when he hit me with it. Partly because – despite the bickering and shit – we’d had some fun times together, these last nine months. Partly because a fraction of me still believed we could make it work. And partly because this was the first time someone had dumped me because of a fictional – yet infuriatingly persistent – belief that I’d been unfaithful. Looking back, the last straw probably came when he interrogated me during sex.

The seed of all of this is a friend of mine, let’s call him Ben, who I’ve know for a couple of years. We dated, briefly, for no more than a few weeks and then – when we realised we weren’t really suited to be boyfriend/girlfriend – we stayed friends. To me this is not such a big deal – I have plenty of guy friends and a couple of them are even ex-boyfriends. My ex could never understand this. He insisted I was friends with Ben to make him jealous. All my efforts to get the two of them meet, get to know each other and perhaps defuse the situation failed because my ex threatened that if he saw Ben he would “punch him in the face”. So I stopped popping round to see Ben, didn’t respond to his texts as often. It made life easier to not make my ex angry. But we had tickets to see Blur at Hyde Park, one of my favourite bands. We’d booked the tickets months ago, I was dead excited about it and the gig had since sold out. So I wasn’t about to give in and cancel it. Who was he to say who I can and cannot be friends with, anyway? It was a bloody brilliant gig too.

The day after the break-up my ex texted a photo of the cafe we used to go for breakfast sometimes, armed with the weekend newspapers and gallons of tea. “Wish you were here,” he wrote. He texted me three or four more times, similar stuff. This was a classic control technique of his, breaking up with with me and then wooing me back with romantic gestures and slushy messages. But not this time. I Googled “pathological jealously” and emailed him a link to Othello Syndrome.

I haven’t heard from him since. A large part of me is relieved. Although annoyingly, after two weeks of ‘traveller’s tummy’ and lounging in the sun my body is more tanned and toned than it’s been in AGES and now I’m not sure when anyone else will get to see it.