My girlfriend sent five messages apologizing, then went quiet again. Earlier, she had left my request for a phone call unanswered for an hour. The apologies arrived almost immediately after I said I was going to talk to some friends online. I had finally heard from her, but I still had no idea where we stood.
We have been together for almost three years. I am 24; she is 23. Recently, one of her male friends told her I was talking to another woman and suggested there was more going on. I have never met this friend. We do not know each other, which made the accusation even harder for me to understand. Someone I could not place in my own life was suddenly telling my girlfriend what I was supposedly doing in it.
She confronted me, and I told her my side. I had not cheated. The conversations I had had with other women were related to work. Work had been hectic, and I had not been going out much anyway. There was no secret encounter for me to explain, no other relationship I was trying to hide. I was trying to answer an accusation that did not match what had happened.
After that conversation, she became distant. Most of my texts went unanswered. She would still respond sometimes when I said I was going to bed or had woken up, so contact had not stopped completely. Those little exchanges remained, while the conversation I actually wanted to have seemed to be disappearing.
That was what made the request to call feel so strange. She had answered my previous message less than two minutes earlier. Then I asked if we could talk, and an hour passed without an answer. I knew she had recently been available to text. I did not know what had changed when I asked to hear her voice.
When I eventually said I was going to chat with my friends online, she responded right away. Five separate apologies. I wanted to understand what she was sorry for and whether this meant we could finally talk. Instead, there was silence again. The messages gave me a brief sense that she was reaching back toward me, without anything that settled the accusation or the distance afterward.
I love her, and that has not disappeared because this is confusing. But another thought has started creeping in: what if she is accusing me because she is cheating herself? I do not have proof. Her withdrawal has made me suspicious; it has not told me what she is doing. I have kept that suspicion to myself rather than turn it into another accusation neither of us can resolve.
For now, the last thing I have from her is that burst of apologies. Five messages saying she was sorry, followed by the same quiet I had been trying to get through.
