I was with my ex for about a year and a half. I always have to put “about” in there because I can’t point to a breakup. We didn’t have one. He simply disappeared.
Looking back, I can see things I didn’t want to see while we were together. I don’t think he loved me the way I thought he did. I feel as though he took up time I couldn’t afford to waste, then left me to work out for myself that it was over.
About a year into the relationship, I began suspecting he was cheating. That suspicion stayed with me until he vanished. I never got a clear account of what was happening.
Now, according to Facebook, he has a new girlfriend.
I want to talk to her. I want to tell her what being with him was like for me—the things I wish someone had told me at the beginning, when I still believed I knew who I was dealing with.
She might be the woman I suspected he was seeing. She might be someone else entirely. I don’t think he used the woman’s real name when he mentioned her to me, so even that connection is something I can’t be sure of.
His new girlfriend is older than I am, probably around 50. I find myself thinking about her time, too. I consider myself a feminist and someone who looks out for other women. It’s uncomfortable to see her there and wonder whether silence means leaving her without information I would have wanted.
But I can also imagine my message getting back to him and being dismissed as something from a “crazy” ex. I don’t want contact with her to become another way for him to pull me into drama. And I can’t offer certainty about the cheating, only my suspicions and what he did to me.
I haven’t messaged her. I keep coming back to the same question: if you were the woman in that new relationship, would you want to hear from me?
