Continuing on from Part V of That One Relationship, Jimmy Yitzak concludes his story…

He and I talked every so often throughout the summer. I even bumped into him a few times on the street. He would always tell me how much he missed me and that we should get together. Whenever I tried to make plans though he was noncommittal.

This was one of the worst summers I had ever had. I was depressed most of the time and I hardly made it to the beach. In fact, I stayed in doors most of the summer. About the time of my birthday, toward the end of August, he contacted me about going away for my birthday. He wanted to take me to the east end of Long Island. I had told him earlier that year how much I had loved going out there with my family when I was a kid and would love to go back. I really missed him even though the birthday plans never happened. I had made the decision that I was going to meet with him and tell him I loved him and that I wanted us to be together but that he had to change and stop with the lies and the deceit.

We had finally made plans to see each other in mid September. I was looking forward to seeing him again. The day before we were to meet, I went to a new yoga class. I was running a few minutes late but once I got into the room I saw a face that made my whole body tense up. I couldn’t quite place the face but I knew that it wasn’t someone I wanted to see, especially not in my safe and calm place of yoga practice. The class that day was terrible for me. I couldn’t focus and just wanted to leave. I stayed and after the glass I went directly to the locker room to change and get out of there. That didn’t happen.

I had started changing when the guy I saw in class came up to me and started to chat. I was doing a very good job at being nice and polite and keeping my cool. He found out we had similar friends in common. We continued on until I finally said, “Come on, let’s cut the crap. We’re both dancing around the elephant in the room.” He agreed and I asked him how he knew the guy I had dated. He explained they met on the street in the spring and started dating. They dated for a good two or three months. They broke up and then dated again in the summer for a couple of months only to break up again.

As he was telling me this and saying all the beautiful things I was told when he and I first started dating, I felt very conflicting emotions. I felt a bit dead inside but I also felt vindicated. I wasn’t crazy. My intuition was correct. There had been someone else and that someone else was standing right in front of me. This someone else asked me how I knew the guy we had both dated. I explained that I had dated him too from the previous October until the beginning of the summer. The look of despair on his face… I felt bad for him since the pain was so much newer for him.

Just to be clear, I had no ill feelings toward this someone else. He was fed a bunch of lies too. He was told that we had broken up and I was no longer in the picture. In any other world this guy and I would have been friends but with the circumstance at hand I think it would have been too hard for the both of us. He then proceeded to tell him how upset my (our) ex’s family was with him for ruining things with me. It gave me slight ego boost. We parted ways and I wished him well. He was leaving NYC to try his luck in LA.

I had a vision of how I wanted the meeting with my ex to go. We would go for dinner, I would order something really expensive and then at the end of the meal I would tell that I knew he was dating someone at the same time as me. I would tell him not to contact me again, no calls, not texts, no emails. I would then stand up and walk out of the restaurant to people clapping for me. In reality, I knew I didn’t have the strength to meet with my ex in person. I knew I would get drawn in and would fall for him again. I decided to write him an email. I laid out all my feelings on the matter. I explained how he tried to come off as this well-mannered gentleman when he was anything but. I told him that he put me at risk for any number of diseases by sleeping around and then I called him spineless and a disappointment. I finally told him to never contact me again and that I never wanted to see his face.

I never did see him again. I also never heard from him again either. I had wanted at least some sort of apology. An acknowledgment of his wrongdoings. Something. Nothing… I never received anything. In the time since then, I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I looked back at the whole relationship and decided I was going to use this as a learning lesson. I was going to reclaim my self-worth. I was going to know how I should be treated and not tolerate anything less. It hasn’t been easy. Once I got over the brunt of the pain, I realized I wasn’t happy in NYC anymore. I packed my bags and moved to Barcelona. I can now say, I’m happy in life. I still have a lot of work to do but I’m well on a very good path. Nobody’s going to keep me down.

The end