The Conversation I Never Got To Have

What would your closure be, if you could have it?

4 min readMar 2, 2022

When my ex-partner cheated on me behind my back and colluded with his new partner about how to best get rid of me with “minimal fallout”, I was suddenly left without answers. My mind raced to understand how my sweet, devoted, kind and loving boyfriend could have done this to me. We spoke every day- how? How did he wait for me to fall asleep after saying he loved me, knowing he would be going out on dates, searching for someone new? Why? Why did he sleep with someone else knowing it would crush me? And why no guilt? Was I a terrible person who deserved it?

I never got to ask those questions. He robbed me of my why, my when, my how, with a long list of lies and half truths. Maybe to protect himself. Maybe to protect me. Probably out of cowardice and an attempt to bury the uglier side of his identity. I get it. Confronting your worst flaws and failures is hard when you’ve always clung to your identity as a good guy. It isn’t easy to live with yourself knowing you’ve really, really screwed something up. For the first few months, I was sure he’d say sorry. I was sure he’d feel bad. I was sure he’d apologise and release me from the trauma of his lying, betrayal and manipulation.

But no apology ever came, or any guilt. He’d shut that chapter hard with a slam, and with it any regrets. I wasn’t a person to heal, to amend, to relieve, just a character in yesterday who probably had it coming and was better off without any further engagement. So that was that.

But I’ve had that conversation many times with his ghost. And it has helped to reflect on what would be said, down an awkward WhatsApp call in mid September, months from now.