It must start out with a realization or revelation or epiphany or something. It can’t just start randomly, the feeling. Or can it? How do they work, feelings? It doesn’t seem to have a pattern or reason or anything. But then they’re there are you’re stuck, thinking, well okay but what do I do now?

That’s where I’m at, just about. Well okay but what do I do now?

I love him, he doesn’t love me.

I’m bored of that. It keeps happening and it has stopped being interesting or character building or any of that s***. It just sucks.

This was worse than most, I’ll admit.

He let on like he cared. We carried on behind her back. I regret that more than I’ve ever regretted anything.

She didn’t deserve him, but he certainly did not deserve her. She loved him, at least. He never loved her. I don’t know if he could love anyone.

It hurts. It hurts.

I feel like a whiny b****. I am one. I did bad things in the hopes that they’d make me happy, I’m not happy and I wanted to be. The bad things made it worse. Surprise! Didn’t see that one coming. So things are worse and he doesn’t care.

Why should he? Should he love me because I had sex with him? He never promised me anything, never told me he had feelings.

Just, his actions... it seemed he did. But that’s okay, there’s no blaming him for not caring.

There is blaming him for what happened afterwards.

He never said he had feelings, but he did say he didn’t have feelings for her, and when we were together he acted... Well, he acted like he liked me. Like that.

But of course he was just “experimenting with his feelings” and “curious” as he said afterwards. He felt that by saying he wasn’t looking for anything he was justified in flirting and everything else.
The night we sat down to talk about how he felt, he didn’t want anything serious, he had just gotten out of a relationship, he knew how I felt and didn’t feel the same, etc. etc.

But then he looked me in the eye, rather forcefully but at the same time incredibly gently pushed me down onto his bed and started kissing me.

I’m a human being, far from infallible. When the person you’ve loved for three years does something like that, I defy you to think rationally. It’s really tough.

So I let it happen.

And happen it did, slowly developing over the next few hours from kissing to caressing to everything I’d always wanted it to be.

He kept looking into my eyes breathlessly as he held me. I thought nothing could be better.

Eventually we were down to about one garment each, and he looked at me. The question was there. I looked back, and that was my answer.

Afterwards he was quiet.

We dressed, silently, which was unlike us.

I couldn’t find one of my socks. I left without it, in the end.

He looked around the room, cleared his throat. I made to leave. He made a noise. But when I looked to see if he was going to say something he looked down.

I opened the door. He followed me down the hall, propping his door open with a soup can that had been converted into a musical instrument. These sorts of things are why I love him.

I looked at him as he walked me to the door of his building. I finally asked So, are things going to be weird and awkward now? Yes, he said, and turned around and went back into his room.

And they have been. The next day I got the text I had been anticipating: Last night was a mistake, I was experimenting with some feelings and I don’t think it should happen again.

We discussed sort of. Then he stopped responding.

Days passed. With each, I lost a little more sleep, a little more sanity. Why would he just disappear?

My friends started reporting that they were seeing him around with another girl, a mutual friend of ours.

It tore me up.

He doesn’t care, but now he’s ignoring me and that’s just mean.

And when he does respond, it hurts worse.

Apparently I ‘bring out the worst in him’ and what we did was ‘one of [his] biggest regrets’. He was simply ‘curious’ and wanted to see ‘how far [I] would let it go’. He said he was sorry for leading me on, but that it was my fault too.

I cried.