First posted on 11 July 2002 ~ Aftermath.

If it's yours, it'll come back to you.
If it's not yours, it was never meant to be.

I suppose you could say our 6-year relationship (actually, almost exactly 6 years in July 2002) began its final road on 10 July at the Long Bar, Raffles Hotel.

I wonder if it's possible to literally die from a broken heart. Like the calm before a storm, it has not fully hit me yet - I can smell the storm about me and I am growing restless from the pain and agony I know is already on its inevitable path of destruction.

I've given so completely of myself, to fit in pieces of myself into the relationship, until I am no longer even "I", but part of "We". Now that it will all come back in different pieces, I can't even begin to imagine how I could hold on to the mess and how to make the pieces into "I" again. I have become so dependant on the "We". I can't imagine life without.

It hurts to be the more loving one. Perhaps he does not love me enough - for him to not compromise on what we both want eventually: he wants children and he will find someone who wants children too. It hurts for me to come to terms with this. I find it hard to understand that what I am and have done for him in the past 6 years are not "enough". Perhaps he really does not love me enough - for him to let a single date decide that he would jeopardise a 6-year relationship to try someone who he has only known at the most for 3 months, and to do so with such readiness and immediacy.

He said he has been thinking about it for some time and since speaking with a married colleague, he has wondered whether there is something "better" out there before he decides I am "the one". Unsaid: I am unsure of you.

"cos i need to think whether i can live with your temper and not wanting kids lor"

"cos maybe im just tired of being the one to approach you after arguements, anyway give me this time to think can?"

I can believe that he was truly hurt by my tantrums and dismayed at my lack of maternal instinct. But is that all the truth, or not even it?

It hurts that I have been blind in my bliss. Perhaps, he has not been as happy as I've thought he had been. How gullible the happy are, to so readily denounce the blindness in others, and yet suffer the same themselves.

If I haven't been badgering him (half in jest) to tell me in advance about his plans for "We", and not to leave me when I am, say 35, and already too old to find another man, would he have continued to drift on in, at the most, "content", and I, in my bliss and happiness? He said my words had set him thinking.

Perhaps he has outgrown this relationship, which on second thought, has been unchanged - though I am, or rather, was, happy enough.

Perhaps a clean break now is better. The thought of him seeing 2 women - but really, is it not just ONE woman, as in the OTHER woman? What is clear to me is that he now has vested interest in her feelings too. He did not want me to meet her because he didn't "want to hurt the TWO of us". While he continues to accept her invitations to go out, he is going out with someone he is growing to like more than a friend. Perhaps I should do him the favour of breaking it now so that he won't have to bear the dishonour of two-timing both of us.

If it's yours, it'll come back to you.

So what if he comes back to me? Can I look into a broken mirror? Can I otherwise accept that he had hurt me, though perhaps not maliciously intended? Can I trust that he will not decide again that he needs to prove to himself that I am indeed "the one" - AGAIN, that there is nothing "better" out there?

If it's not yours, it was never meant to be.

I almost begged him last night to stay. But why delay the inevitable? That I am not actively trying to change his mind in no way means I love or want him less - if what I am on my own is not enough, then what more is there to do or say? He has said too, calmly and I thought, coldly, that this is something he has to resolve "internally".

Maybe it's not just about my temper and having children - though he stresses that, perhaps to lessen the hurt that he is attracted to someone else, so readily, so quickly.

I would like to believe it's my fault - perhaps if I had been more even-tempered and maternal, things wouldn't be thus. But maybe it's not just me, but him, and I can't cope with knowing there's an external factor without my control.

If it's yours, it'll come back to you.
If it's not yours, it was never meant to be.

Taking time out. He needs 2 weeks to think.

Maybe I should just let go now - only to lessen the pain when he or I or both of us eventually break it off, for our own reasons.