I left my boyfriend of 8 months a week before Christmas last year. I did so because he was deceitfully unfaithful, among many other less than desirable personality traits; judgmental, pompous, selfish, emotionally manipulative – but the wandering heart and eye was the clincher. The thing that finally tipped the scale between pros and cons, finally make me stop defending his flaws to my family and friends… and I guess, to myself too. In a single moment, I lost my grip on a future where we were together. Hell, a future where we simply remain on friendly terms is unimaginable and undesirable to me in the most indescribable fashion. He broke my trust, my heart and our relationship with his lack of honesty and weak character. I knew I deserved so much more than what he had to offer, so I checked myself out of that relationship without a single backward glance, or a single word to him for that matter. I was in between houses at the time and staying with him. I packed my things while he was at work and by the time he got home, I was gone, my set of keys were on the kitchen bench and his number was blocked in my phone. I threw up the white flag and removed myself from the triangle, allowing him the freedom to go and be with “she’s just a friend, I don’t see her that way”, whom he had on the side.

We did eventually talk, after he bombarded my phone with calls that went straight to my voice message inbox (I failed to realise I had only blocked his text messages, not his calls… *derp*), and I regret that. Immensely. He knew straight away why I was gone, he wasn’t worried about me, he wasn’t confused as to what had happened and he certainly didn’t want to try and make me change my mind – he just wanted to clear his conscious. The conversation we had that night served no purpose other than to give him the opportunity to waste my time (and insult the memory of our relationship), with the weakest apology I’m sure he’s ever given (this I know, because he apologised many times during our relationship to keep me from leaving). I have no doubt that he was relieved to come home and find me gone – he just needed the reassurance that he’d done the right thing and said sorry – I shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction, I shouldn’t have taken the call.

I thought I was over everything that had happened in our relationship, but lately I find myself consumed again by anger, each time the realisation of a lie he’d told to keep his story in-check brings itself to the forefront of my mind. What’s even worse, are the moments spent reminiscing when I felt safe and loved with him. Those moments are far and few between, but I hate them. I know 8 months isn’t a very long time to have been with a person but it was such a whirl wind of a relationship, it’s left a scar on my soul. After the first month of being together we were never able to maintain smooth sailing in our relationship, for anything longer than 2 or so weeks. We would always fight about something. For me, fighting in a relationship was so completely foreign. I’m 25 and have only ever been in one other serious relationships; which was my first boyfriend. We dated for a year when I was 21. He suffered from depression and never got angry about anything. Our relationship was emotional in much the same way that my most recent relationship was – but we never got angry at each other or yelled at each other. That relationship was the only thing I had to compare with the turbulent relationship I found myself in last year.

I should have realised he was playing me for a fool when he told me he loved me after a week. During sex no less. I said it back but I was by no means, sure that I loved him at that point. I highly doubt he meant it when he said it either. We were both just so drunk on lust and happiness during those first few weeks, but it wasn’t love. We were crazy about each other, or at least he had me believing we were both crazy about each other. We had many deep conversations within days of meeting and I had told him with express seriousness, that no one had ever told me they loved me before and to please be sure before he went down that road – before we went down that road. So when he said it, I trusted him and I let myself be open to him. We’d both been hurt by past relationships but he would always try and persuade me that he’d been hurt more, that although I’d been hurt, it wasn’t as much as him. He was superb with words. He could talk himself out of anything and leave me feeling like I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

I’m not writing here today because I want him back, I’m not writing because I’ve lost my faith in love, I’m not even writing because I want you all to agree with me that he’s a horrible human being – I’m writing because I want to know how to forgive him. I won’t move on completely until I forgive him. Can anyone help me to get to that stage of forgiveness so I can forget about my past and look to my future?