You're listening to a Mum and mea podcast. Muma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters. This podcast is recorded on It's often said we women have a sixth sense. Our guts are strong and can play a big part in whether we trust someone or not.
Behavior change says a lot about someone, especially when you're in such a good relationship and all of that changes. I think that spoke wonders, So yeah, I think a part of me did know that something was going on and that I wanted to figure out what it was.
But a gut instinct is an evidence. Can our bodies buy tricks on us? We can choose to ignore, to live with the icky feelings, or we can choose to confront them head on.
And I said to him, I have found out some information about you, and I need you to tell me the truth. And if you tell me the truth now, we can work through this, and we can work through this together. But if you light on my face, I will walk away right now. And he just looked at me and went completely white and just started hysterically crying and saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and just owned it.
I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an ex Come with me as we dive into a collection of unconventional stories about relationships past through the eyes and the hearts of the very people who live them now. Dear listener, We've brought your stories before about young love, but this one might just take the cake. Claire and Patrick were just sixteen when they met, not even in their final years of high school. When they got together.
We were talking for a few months and sort of seeing each other very casually, as you can imagine in year ten it's quite casual. And then like three or four months in, he just called it quits and he was just like, I only see you as a friend. I was absolutely heartbroken, Like I was. I thought this boy was gonna be my first boyfriend, and I was so excited, and then he just kind of was like, I just see you as a friend. It honestly took
me about a year to get over him. Like I would see him out at parties and I would do anything I could to get his attention.
I would talk to his friends.
He just had absolutely no no interest in me anymore. And it wasn't until probably like a year after that where I'd finally gotten over him, and I knew that because I saw him at a party and he said hi, and I was so disinterested, and for the first time ever, I went, I actually don't care that you're here. It was so freeing because I was like, I'm actually over this guy after a year. And you know they say they come crawling back when they know you've moved on,
and he came crawling back. He started messaging me again and wanting to hang out. I was pretty disinterested, but he was persistent, and I was like, Okay, we can give this another crack. I realized that I wasn't actually over him. I wanted to be, but yeah, there's always a little part of me that had that tiny bit of hope that we would get back together because I really really.
Did like him.
It was end of year eleven when we started officially dating, became boyfriend and girlfriend, and I had my first ever boyfriend. I honestly was infactuated. He was such an amazing person. He was just the cool guy. Everyone when they found out I was dating him, like it was like, oh my god, you're dating Patrick. That's so cool, Like it was quite a cool thing. Like he was just known to be one of those amazing guys. He had a really good reputation, so everyone that spoke to me literally
had only good words to say about him. He genuinely was so caring, so loving. He had put a lot of thought into our relationship. So when I finished my exams, he'd come over and drop me care packages like bathrobe or chocolates and things like that. So he really was, on paper, a perfect boyfriend. The first year was honestly amazing, Like I think it set the standard for what I
wanted to be treated like. I would sneak out on school nights and he'd pick me up and would sleep in the back of his car because we weren't allowed sleepovers.
In year twelve, he'd plan these romantic dates.
On Valentine's Day, he would take me down to their favorite beach with a picnic rug and everything. Pretty much everything you'd want as a seventeen year old from a relationship.
He was giving like pen to paper.
He had everything that you'd want for So yeah, it was honestly so amazing. It was a feeling of I've found my person. I was convinced I was going to marry him, like it felt so right, and I had a lot of friends that were in relationships that weren't being treated the same way as I was. So I felt so lucky and so special for being treated like that, and very grateful for it.
But they were young, and young people often make mistakes while they're bumbling through what life is meant to look like beyond all you've ever known.
For all those years at school, at.
The end of year twelve, when we went to schoolies, or what we call levers, we actually went to separate leavers, which was a shame because obviously you're celebrating finishing high school and you want to be doing that with your person.
But we both knew that wasn't going to happen because our.
Friends were going different places and it was over that period. I honestly had no insecurities or any doubts at that time, because I was never given a reason to.
But it was when I came back from school is and saw.
Him for the first time, I just knew that something had happened and everything had changed, his whole mannerisms, even just the look in his eyes, like it was like I was talking to an entirely different person. So I got to his house and he had a black eye, which I am a little princess, like I hate fist fights. That was always something I said to him because high school boys sometimes get drunk and do stupid things, and I always laid out the carts, do not get involved in fist fights.
It's disgusting. So he had a black eye and.
He said to me, I ran into a door, which was straight up a very bizarre thing to say. And he's just very withdrawn, like, wasn't treating me the same. His mannerisms were different, his behaviors were different. And then after a lot of investigating and persistence from my end, he finally admitted that he wasn't a dool and that he got in a punch up with someone in school. It was probably like a couple of months where he was different. He was really really withdrawn. His behaviors were different.
He just wasn't putting in the effort as much. And to be honest, I didn't think much of it at the time. I thought, it's a big life change. We were in school, you know, before that, and now we've got all this freedom where we're both eighteen, Like, there's a lot of change happening in our lives. So I think I kind of put those behavior changes to that.
But it wasn't.
Until I was out at a like a day event with all my girlfriends and I had a friend of mine come up to me, like pull me out of the moshpit and be like, just want to let you know that Patrick is sending notes to my friend. My stomach sunk, but I just still did not believe that he was capable of that. I knew how much he loved me, so I was just like, I just didn't believe that he would be capable of doing that. But it's also a very very bizarre allegation for someone to make.
There's no motive for her as have said any of that. So yeah, I think a part of me believed it, but the majority of me just was in deny and was like, he's not capable of that, and there must be some other reason or some confusion here. So yeah, I just kind of enjoyed my night the best that
I could with my girlfriends. I stayed for a couple of hours, but obviously my mind was busy, so my cousin and I went back to her house and I gave him a call and asked him about what I had heard about the snapchats with this girl, and immediately he was angry, so angry that I would even believe someone over him, and that I would even think that he was capable of something like that. So my reaction for believing and being upset over what I had heard was the problem, not the fact that I had heard
that or that he had done that. So yeah, it was a big, big blowout where he was so angry and upset with me for pretty much accusing him, and I pretty much spent the next like two three days apologizing and making up.
To him in every way that I could.
You know, he put up the silent treatment on me for a couple of days, and I hate the silent treatment so much it literally drives me insane. But yeah, I ended up apologizing and making it up to him, and from there on he was like, Okay, he wasn't happy that I believe someone that I hardly knew over him, which at the time made sense to me because my loyalties and my trust sat with him, so I shouldn't have believed a stranger over my boyfriend who had proven
nothing to me that he would ever do that. He'd never broken my trust before, so to doubt him based off what I had heard from pretty much a stranger, did seem wrong. Once he kind of presented that point to me, he started acting a little bit back to normal. But that pit in my stomach never left. Once that seed has been planted in your head, you always are going to have a tiny seed of doubt. And although I didn't believe that he had done it, there was
always that inkling but what if? So has any investigated girlfriend would do. He was in the shower one day and I just thought, the only way I'm going to crush this is by going into his phone and just checking his snapchat best friends to see if that girl's name was there. I fought it for a long time because maybe I didn't.
Want to see what was in there.
Every time I was with him and the phone was left in the room, I thought about it, but I think there's that element of breaking their trust. It's a very big invasion of privacy going on someone's phone. So I think I fought it for as long as I could. But after a couple of months of just continually always thinking that what if and just wanting to know the answers and the truth, I just bit the bullet and had to look for myself.
So he was in the shower.
And I on his phone, and to my surprise, all six of his snapchat best friends were females. He went to a co ed school. Having a lot of female friends is not a red flag to me. I honestly find that I really liked that about him because I knew a lot of his girlfriends, but there were none of his girlfriends on this six best friends, so there was not one name that I recognized, so they were all complete strangers' names, and one of the girls was
the one from the accusation. My heart was literally beating out my chest, like you know that sinking feeling where you literally feel like you're gonna be sick. And he came back in and I was completely withdrawn. My face was bright red, I was sweating, So he knew that something was up. Even if I didn't want to bring up with him, he would have been able to get it out of me because of the way that I
was acting. So I just told him, I said, I went on your snapchat and I've seen all of these girls, including the girl that you know I was told about this party, and straightway it was fine. He was so angry at me for going through his phone. He was so angry at me for being so insecure, for doubting him for having girlfriends. I was the problem because I was controlling.
He pretty much.
Flipped it on me to say I wasn't allowing him to have girls that were friends, so that I was the problem in this situation, and that I've got no evidence to say that these messages with these girls aren't friendly because I know that he has a lot of girlfriends. He completely flipped the script. I started doubting myself, being like, wait, but what if he is telling the truth. I know that he does have a lot of girls that are friends. What if I actually am just being really insecure now?
And it just makes you doubt yourself because you're like, I actually don't have any physical proof here, so I can't know for sure just because I'm seeing these girls' names, they could just be friends, like he's saying. So again, I didn't have that concrete evidence that I think I was after, and he was just so good with making it like I was the one that had the problem. I was the one that was insecure. And I left that conversation again apologizing I was sorry for going through
his phone. I was sorry for doubting him and convincing him that I'm not controlling and that I'm happy with him having girlfriends and I love that he has girlfriends.
I felt guilty, I did.
I think it is such an invasion of privacy to go through someone's phone, and that was against my own sort of morals to do that. So, you know, to have him angry at me for doing that, that made me feel very very guilty. It did also make me feel guilty that I did question him again.
That period.
It was pretty rocky. I was very very insecure. I'm very doubtful. I ended up messaging one of the girls that I saw on the snapchat names. The amount of hay girl messages I send, like, honestly, I couldn't count on ten hands, Like I sent so many shameful messages of hey girl, like I know you've been snapchatting so and so, just wondering is it flirty? So I did the hay girl message to one of these girls and she was like, yeah, like it's a bit flirty, but no nudes or anything.
It's been exchanged.
So that to me was my reassurance that Okay, maybe he is just being friendly with these girls, because this is one of the girls I picked up the list and she had told me that there was no nude sending. It was just flirty. And you know, he's a friendly, charismatic guy. His friendliness can be perceived as flirty, or at least you know, that's sort of how I put
it in my own head. He just continually, I guess, reassured me in a sense, like I had his phone pass code, and he always left his phone in the room, which is such a green flag, which is bizarre considering you know, he was snapchatting these girls, so you know, leaving the phone in the room, giving me his pass codes.
So they moved on. Claire believed him and trusted him, so there was no point harping on it. Their relationship could go back to being the wonderful, happy and fun one it had always.
Been before I was going to UNI, and he was sort of doing nothing, to be honest, and I think that was another big shift in his behavior because at school he was so driven, he was so motivated, He had all these aspirations about what he wanted to do in life, and then all of a sudden, you know, he's finished school, He also got into smoking a lot of weed once finishing school, because I think he had a lot of spare time. And when I say smoking
a lot of weed, it was every day. It was smoking to wake up, smoking to go to sleep, and he just lost all drive and all motivations. So he was you know, I was a very driven person, so I was always like, let's go to UNI, like let's figure this out what you want to do. And you know, we enrolled him into a class, into a course, and he started that but then ended up dropping out. So
we were at this stage at very different lifestyles. There was obviously a lot of issues from then, Like he started to get very jealous and very insecure about me, so he started making all these wild accusations about me cheating, which is was just bizarre because I I pride myself of being loyal and I've never done anything to make him think that, and my behaviors had never changed. But all of a sudden, he was getting upset with me for talking to this person out or smiling at this
person or laughing at someone. Like I've never seen someone so jealous and protective of.
Me with other men.
He accused me and my best friend's partner who is one of my best friends still to this day. So we were kind of like a double dates all the time. We started dating around the same time. We did everything together. On Valentine's Day, they took us four you know, couples retreat sort of thing. We did everything together. He used to say to me, the way you look at this person, you've got a sparkle in your eye. You don't look at you don't look at me the same way you
look at him. And I was like, I don't get what you're talking about. This is my best friend's boyfriend of three years, Like where is this coming from? And he was like, you have a sparkle in your eye when you look at him. And that's when we were just like, he's lost the plot. How can you think that when it's my best friend's partner and also your best friend at the same time. So that's when the cheating allegations are towards me. I was like, Okay, this
is kind of getting out of control. We were both still living at home. We're probably staying together like three
four nights a week. I always wanted more because I think in my head, deep down, I knew if he was with me, he wouldn't be messaging other girls because I actually caught him another time separate to the Snubtat time, I was on his laptop while he was doing something and I went on his Facebook messenger and I saw lots of messages with these random girls which were just trying to get them to come over or to see him. I confronted him about these as well, and he just
started hysterically crying. Was just like he didn't mean it. It was when he smoked weed. He couldn't help the desire to want to message women, but he never would action it sort of thing. So he was like, I really like, I'm never going to cheat on you. I just when I'm high, I can't help but message these women. I caught him like a couple of times with that, and it got to the point where he always had an excuse and he never had physically cheated, so I guess in my head, I was like, we can still
fix this. So at this point, he wanted to give me his passwords to everything, so to Facebook, Messager, to Snapchat, to Instagram. He wanted me to be have his passwords and stay logged in so that he wouldn't have the desire or he would have that holding him back from messaging girls because he knew that I'd be able to see them. So he was very self aware about his
addiction to get this validation from these girls. I was like, he obviously wants to change, like if he's giving me these passwords, like, this is an issue that he wants to fix with me. So and the messages never led to cheating because I could always see them. It was always come over. Either the girl would bar him or
he would not end up not replying. So it was this weird thing where it's almost like he wanted to desire to feel wanted, or he needed validation to know that if he were single, these girls would have an interest in him. I really loved him, and I wanted to be with him, and I wanted to fix it. I think a big part of that is because I saw his potential in that first year. I saw how good he could be and how well he could treat me.
So I was holding onto that in the hope that we could get back there because I knew that that's what he was capable of. I wanted to fix him. He didn't really have siblings. He had bad relationship with his parents. So I really was that person for him, and I felt like I could help him get back on track. I could get him, you know, stop smoking off the drugs, you know, get back into UNI. I really felt like I could be that person for him.
I loved him and I loved his potential. I knew what he could be, so I really really held onto that. I think it's probably so hard for people to empathize with someone who hasn't been in a situation like that, because you can't quite get a grasp and like, why you wouldn't walk away because it seems so easy just walk away. But it's just like when someone has this this grasp on you and you know they've built this
sort of toxic bond with you. They're so reliant on you, and I became reliant on him and wanting to help him.
It was rocky, but Claire was adamant they'd be okay, and things were until one night, something weird happened out of nowhere. Claire just had this horrible, sinking feeling while lying in bed next to him.
We had spent Sunday night together. Honestly, nothing in his behaviors would have indicated that something had happened. But yeah, we went to bed that night and.
I just woke up. I struggled to get to sleep for quite some time.
I just just gut feeling and then I woke up in the middle of the night just with this sick feeling and being like something is wrong, something has happened. And they say that gut feelings are Guardian angels, and they literally are. I woke him up in the middle of the night was like, you've cheated on me. He was just like straight out the whip, like deny, deny, deny, and you're crazy, Like why do you think that? And I was just like I just know. Unfortunately, a gut
feeling isn't evidence. Again, I had that lack of evidence to really.
Put in front of him. So it ended up in.
A big blow up again, and then we ended up going to sleep on separate sides of the bed. I was in bed crying, and then I had my genius idea where I was going to pull out the reverse psychology on him. He was dropping me home the next day and I said to him, I have found out some information about you, and I need you to tell me the truth. And if you tell me the truth. Now we can work through this, and we can work through this together. But if you light on my face,
I will walk away right now. And he just looked at me and went completely white and just started hysterically crying and saying I'm sorry. I had him in my arms. I was like patting him on the back and like it's okay, it's okay. He was so hysterical about the fact that I'd found out, like I need you to tell me exactly what happened. So yeah, this point, he didn't know what I knew, which was nothing.
Obviously.
He was like, I'll just tell her the truth because he thought that I had all the information. It was a couple weekends prior. His best friend's older sister dropped him home after a party. Apparently he was very drunk, and she took him inside and then they had sex. I honestly would have thought I would have been so devastated, but I've never felt so much relief to know that I wasn't crazy. It was like a year and a half, two years of being like, oh my god, I'm not
going crazy. I finally had concrete proof and evidence that I wasn't insane because all of these times I was hearing things and I was having half evidence, but I never had him own it. I'd never had him admit to it. So to finally hear him say I cheated on you was like the best relief in the world, Like to just know that I wasn't crazy.
It was then Claire's instincts kicked in. See what we haven't mentioned yet is that every time Patrick was confronted about close concerns of his infidelity, his go to reaction was anger.
He was a very angry, angry person.
A lot of these big arguments ended up with him punching a wall, which I remember in his mom's house. I think he had had about six holes in the back of his wall from conversations that we were having. It's just the way he dealt with it, was just angry and would punch a fist through the wall. Because I knew how he reacted to things, I always wanted
to comfort him. So honestly, he was in my arms crying, and I was sitting there hugging him and patting him on the back, saying it's okay, and he's just screaming, hysterically crying, saying I can't lose you, like, you know, if I lose you, I've got no one else. You can't walk away from me. You're my only person, Like, please, please don't leave me. So it's a lot for someone
to take him. Firstly, to have someone you love regardless of what he'd just done, Like he was desperately crying for help for me, and I was his lifeline, Like he didn't really have anyone else. So to have him crying and begging for my help regardless of the betrayal he'd just done, A part of me was sad for him.
And I wanted to help him.
I didn't want to I didn't want to leave him to suffer on his own, which is so strange to think considering I just found out that I had been cheated on. But yeah, I just ended up. It was like half an hour in the car of me comforting him until he finally got himself together, and I just said, look, I need to go home and I need to think, and i'll contact you tomorrow. Just give me some time.
So I ended up driving home straight away, got on the phone with the girlfriends and did the big debrief and yeah, from there, I kind of just took a while to process it.
Of course, I did the typical.
Hey girl message to the girl because I actually knew her quite well, which was another bit of a stab in the back, But I think I was pretty used to taking hits at this point, so yeah, I sent her a message and was like, hey, you know, Patrick is just told me what happened. I want to know
from your side what happened. Out of all the Hay girl messages, she's the only one to ever deny to me, which is so strange because I think it was a very sticky situation for her because her younger brother was his best friend, their families had been very united for very many years. She also knew we'd been together for two or half years since then, so I think she had.
Not more to lose.
But she was more embarrassed that that happened. She didn't want her younger brother to find out, she didn't want everyone to find out. So yeah, she denied to the cows came home. I hate to say it, because I never want to blame the girl, but yeah, part of me was angry at her because she was denying, and I wanted to validate his story against hers. You know, he was saying that she took advantage of him, and I wanted to know whether that was the truth, and
I couldn't get that from her. So that was again this missing piece of the puzzle which I just couldn't get. So it was more frustrating because yeah, every Hay Girl message I got, I always got a great response from the girls, you know, all the girls girls go but they Yeah, she just didn't want to give me any answers, which was such a shame because I feel like that would have really helped me in that time to kind
of understand the situation. But yeah, I just I was angry and frustrated at the start, and then you know, you went, I went through my sad phase of being like, how have we gotten to this? And then you know, starting to question everything from the past, all the red flags that I had seen that I had ignored. Now because I'd finally got I finally had him admit to me that it had happened. So yeah, it made me start to question and reflect on everything that had happened
over the past couple of years. When I got home from finding that out, I obviously spoke to all the girls and we had the conversation about you know, I need to get out of this relationship, and I knew I needed to get out of it because I'd just been cheated on. And what advice would I give my friend in this situation, and that would be to walk away. And I always would think about that, about what advice I would give to my friend if she was in this situation, and it would be to get the hell
out of there. So I knew deep down that it was time to leave. And after taking a few days of sort of processing and thinking, I was ready to tell him that I was going to walk away. So it took a while because obviously you're fighting these two things of it's one time, it's a mistake and you know she took advantage of him, and he's so sorry and he really wants to fix this, and then the other side of wants a cheaterh always a cheater and the trust is completely broken. So it was a very
hard decision to make. But yeah, I ended up meeting up with him and went in there to break up with him. Unfortunately walked out back with him, which always
seemed to be the thing. I think I went in there at least six times to break up with him after finding out different things, whether it was a message or a snapchat, Like there's so many different things in between the big stories which I would catch him and I'd go in to break up with him, but it would always be the exact same thing, where he would be hysterically crying. He would tell tell me he can't live without me, like if I walk away, he don't know,
he doesn't know what will happen to him. It was always me comforting him rather than, you know, putting myself first. And I think a lot of that came from the pressure of feeling like what if I did walk away and he did do something to himself, Like I honestly felt like a lot of his life was in my hands, which is a lot for someone who is so young but also so in love with this person.
So she did stay with him even after he admitted he cheated, and Claire was so sure he had before she stayed. As the great poet Taylor Swift says, I can fix him, No, really, I can.
I think deep down I always knew that I needed to leave, but I genuinely just loved him so much, like I wanted to help him and I wanted to fix him, and I knew what he was capable of again that first year, I think seeing how great he was, and I knew I could get him back there if I just got him off smoking weed, got him back on track, Like we could get back there. I withdrew from my friends because I knew what they would have to say. I am so blessed that I had the
most supportive friends. One of them, the same one that sort of was involved the whole way, used to drop me to his house every time to break up with him, and then would wait out the front for me to take me home and I would textss A, you can go. A lot of them had to deal with it, and I honestly don't know how they managed to say friends with me during the whole time, because it's so hard to watch their friend go through something like that.
And when I.
Really thought I was going to leave this relationship and I told them like this is it, like halolu, let's go, and then the sort of I guess they're being able to be like, oh god, I'm actually going to have to tell them again that I'm going back to him, and like what's that going.
To mean for our friendships?
Because it's so hard for them to have to watch me go through this again, and like have to be so involved in such a toxic relationship because I always came to them for support and always came to them. So yeah, a lot of the thought of just guilt as well for what I was going to have to admit to them, like, yeah, I'm going to give it
another crack. When I knew deep down that it wasn't the right thing to do, I felt like I had a purpose to help him, and if I left, who would So yeah, part of me felt just trapped, and it was just embarrassing, to be honest, Like I was embarrassed because it wasn't just my friends that knew about this, but people were finding out about what was happening in our circle, and people were knowing I was the girl that was getting back with the guy that was cheating on her, and it was embarrassing.
But dear listener, you've heard this podcast before, you know this story isn't going to end there.
So this is the best part.
So at this point, you know, we're probably two and eight half years in, but a year and half into the toxicity, I had all these passwords. Still there'd been lots of allegations and things, but the only concrete cheating I had known at this point.
I had been.
Out for dinner with a girlfriend and I'd gone back to his house. He was playing Xbox in his room and I was watching a movie on his laptop, so I went on too. I had a little bit of a wandering hand that somehow stumbled into his I message on his laptop, and I saw some messages with an unknown number. I don't think at this point he knew that when you delete off your iPhone, it immediately deletes off your laptop, like it has to like connect or something, so he must have thought he was in the clear.
And I went onto these messages and immediately was like a hit in the stomach.
Here we go again. The last messages I could.
Just see were like just vile, and I just scrolled up and I just saw like messages on messages on messages. It was an unknown number. I couldn't see who it was. Honestly, I wasn't reading it at that time. I've just wanted to get to the top, get my evidence, and get
the hell out of there. So I saw some photos exchange where I could see it was a girl with pink hair, and they were sending nudes to each other, but I didn't know who it was, so I pretty much just scrolled to the top of the messages, whipped out my iPhone and started recording and just started scrolling through the messages because I didn't have time to read them and I just wanted to get out of there, So I recorded all these messages that he had been
exchanging with this woman, and then once I had gotten them, I left open on his laptop and I legged it out the door faster than I honestly think I've ever run in my life, and then just left them open on his laptop and got my car and just faged it down the road down to a park where I could actually stop the car and read the messages. The first message he had sent to her was pretty much
thanking her for a wonderful night. He said, you know, she'd given him the best massage with the nicest coconut oil, pretty much a full paragraph and saying he still, you know, ponders on that night. Like it was like a poem, like I've never seen someone so poetic, and he like signed it off with his first letter of his name and a heart. And then this woman came back and was just pretty much gave him poems back saying, you know, I had such a wonderful night with you, and I
would love to see you again. So at the start, I was like, Okay, so we've obviously got some sort of relationship going on here. And it wasn't until I kept going through the messages that I realized that she was a sex worker. She wasn't asking for him to come back for money, so she was actually saying she would love to see him again, and she doesn't expect any payment, like she would just love to see him again.
So yeah, they were kind of going back and forth, sexing some really interesting messages about that night.
It was just a whole lot.
And then she started, you know, saying, I'm getting some new photos and videos for my website. Do you want to see them before I post them? And he's like, go for it. And then they're kind of like talking about these photos and then she's like, I would love to see you tonight and he's like I can't.
I'm babysitting my little sisters aka my girlfriend's coming over.
So yeah, they were just like it was just the most intense messages I'd ever read, So it was all in that one night. They were exchanging messages that night for about like an hour, an hour or two before I had gotten there, and he pretty much like wrapped up the conversation saying, I gotta go, and my sister's going to be here soon. But yeah, they were going through good two hours whilst I was out at dinner.
I was disgusted because I firstly didn't know what night that it had been, Like, not only is he cheating, but he's putting me in.
A situation now where he's sleeping with other people and coming home to me, looking me in the eyes, and then sleeping with me. I don't know whether he'd been using protection with her. I was angry.
I found it so selfish that he would put me in that situation. Like there was so many emotions that I didn't even know how.
To process it.
I was just like the first time was relief, and this time was just I was so overwhelmed and I was so embarrassed that I was gonna have to own this to everyone and be like, Yep, it happened again, and this time with a sex worker named doctor Pussy. I got her phone number from the messages and entered it into Google and I found her page. She was over forty years old, so she was really really you know, we were you know, early twenties then, so she was
a lot older. And to know that, you know, she would have known his age, and she was wanting him to come back for free and like to really make something of that. And I just felt so gross because it just made me question. I had no idea what night this was. We were spending a lot of time together, so honestly it would have been a night that he would have come home to me. So yeah, it was just like trying to put the pieces together. Patrick was a good looking guy, Like he was gorgeous.
So he could get anyone.
He would be able to go out on a night out and get any girl he wanted, like genuinely he was told he was gorgeous, but he had this weird thing where he just needed validation or something like that, where yeah, it wasn't about the cheating, it was almost
just about getting as much attentional anything like that. So I think it let me confuse because I also went then looking on that sex worker page and saw all these beautiful women, you know, of his age, and was just so confused by his choice, which is so pole opposite to me, and just you know, you start questioning all these questions like what does she have? You know, what is it? We had an active sex life, as you can imagine for a man that was pretty much
a sex addict. Yeah, he had this desire for other women for some reason, whatever that was. So I ended up messaging Octopussy myself, just out of anger, out of frustration, and I pretty much messaged her and just said, hey, I just want to let you know Patrick is in a you know, three and a half year relationship. I hope you're happy with what you've done, which is so horrible and I can put my hat up and say
that it's just ridiculous. And she came back to me and she said, look, sometimes men need to do things to women that they can't do to the women that they love. And I just went back to her and said, darling, you are not the first one. And then she came back to me and pretty much was like I didn't realize, you know, he'd cheat on you lots of times, like
you should leave him, walk away. And I was now all of a sudden getting this relationship advice from Octopusy and like it was bizarre, but she was like on my side saying, you know, you don't deserve that. You don't deserve a man to continually cheat on you.
Like I didn't.
Realize that that was going on. I was sitting there being like, what is my life? Like, I'm now messaging a forty year old sex worker about my cheating boyfriend.
And it only got more bizarre from there.
We exchanged a couple of texts and then I think she ended up messaging him saying, you know, your girlfriend's messaging me, and then he's messaging her saying, can you help me sort it out with her? So this poor poor sex worker was stuck in between our relationship pretty much mediating. She had him begging for help to help, you know, reconcile our relationship and give me advice that would help us get back together, whereas she had me kind of being like a bit sassy but also like
this is the situation. So yeah, I never thought that this poor woman would be stuck in between. She had definitely got more than what she barkained.
For with that one.
But I ended up obviously after a couple of exchanges and texts and realizing what am I doing ended up cutting the messages off. It was call and text and text and CaAl and like I was just like, it was weeks of just leave me alone, like it's done, and I was done. I was like, you have betrayed me for the second time. The fact that you could go out and do that and then come home and look me in the eyes and tell me you love me.
Like I was furious.
I was just like, I'm so done with you. And this honestly should have been the final straw. And I don't know what witchcraft he put on me to somehow reel me back in for the last time, but it was just weeks of persistence and begging and telling me that if I walk away, his life isn't worth living, and putting that pressure back on me. He was willing to work, like he was willing to make the changes that he needed, which was he was going to stop smoking.
He was reaching out to my friends and you know, spinning all these webs with them and you know, telling them everything they wanted to hear. Like he is so good with his words that you'd leave the conversation and be like, maybe it is worth giving him another chance.
Maybe he is going to change.
He genuinely was so distressed and distraught, and in the time that we were broken up, he was making the changes. He'd stopped smoking weed. He came back so persistent and so willing to change, and he just wasn't going to give up until I got back with him. I think I knew deep down I was going to walk away, and I knew it was going to happen again, but I was hoping by that next time I would have the courage in me to say this is it. To
be honest, we weren't back together boyfriend and girlfriend. We were working things out. He was proving to me that, you know, he could be who he was in the first year. One morning, I was working in my cafe job and I went on to his snapchat while I was working, and I saw, like I could see in his recence there was this girl's name, but then when I swipe across to his feed, the girl's name wasn't there. So straight away that's an alarm bells, being like he's
deleted the chat. So I immediately just didn't even bother messaging him. I went straight to the girl and just said, hey, no, you're snapchatting Patrick. You know this is my boyfriend. Can you let me know what's happening. This girl was amazing. She gave me all the tea, everything I needed to hear, and it was like a light bulb moment. I cannot explain it. My feelings just switched. It was like I needed that to just walk away. I felt nothing for him.
I was just like, Okay, thank you. She had validated that they'd been snapchatting, that they had been sending nudes and sexting. She had sent me a screenshot off this message that he'd sent saying that he's going to have to stop talking to her to be respectful to Claire, but one day they can do the things that they spoke about. I flipped a switch. I remember I was
working alone in this cafe. I went to the bathroom, created a group chat with all my girlfriends, like all the ones even from different friendship groups, and said, guys, I swear to God, I'm done.
Like this is it. I couldn't explain the feeling of It's like all my love for him just disappeared.
It was just such a weird feeling that I finally was able to let go, like I was done, And it didn't take him cheating on me with a sex worker.
It didn't take him messaging girls.
It was just finding out that he was still doing it after I'd gotten back with him. I was slowly checking out over the months, but I just never was prepared to walk away. And I think that a lot of that came from holding onto the hope and the pressure of what would happen if I did leave.
But I was finally ready to be selfish say you know what I am done.
I think I needed to get over him while I was still with him, so that when I was finally done, ready to pull the pin, it was easy to walk away.
She cut all contact with him, despite his endless attempts to call and text. He was trying to say sorry, to again, say he'd change and work on it, but Claire had had enough. After a couple of weeks, she agreed to meet up with him for one last conversation, but she was staunch it was only for her own closure.
I went in there.
We met up at a car park and I jumped in his car and he's sitting there hysterically crying, and I was the ice princess like. I did not touch him, I did not comfort him, which for him would have been an absolute shock, because every other six times I've tried to break up with him, he had me comforting him. So I think then he knew, oh my God, like this is real. I let loose on him. I went in there with every point I need to have. I needed him to know everything i'd felt of that three
and a half years, everything he'd put me through. I was angry, and I don't think I was ever angry. I was usually quite a placid, quite a reserved when it came to our arguments because of how he reacted, because at the end of the day, I was always scared of his reaction to me. So to go in there with so much anger and fuel in my belly and just be like, you are a piece of shit,
and yeah, I absolutely tore him a new one. And he sat there and apologized and said all the things that he used to say to, you know, try and make me consider getting back with him. And I just sat there the ice princess and just said, are you done?
And then he said I'm done?
And I said, okay, well I'm going and I opened the door and he just said, there's just one more thing, And I was like, here we go, and he plugs in his USB twas ORCS cord and started to play just Want to Be with You asking musical two and started singing at the top of his lungs like I genuinely thought I'd been to a musical theater performance. Like it was bizarre to the point where I'm like, this is actually like embarrassing. The context of that is we
loved Tysko musicol. We used to sing it all the time in the car, so there was a little bit of romance to that, but it was honestly appalling, like to think that, you know what, this is my one way to get her back.
I'm going to go full Troy Bolton on her. And it didn't work.
When he knew and I didn't come in for the sweet melody of just want to be with you, he knew, Yeah, I was done.
Finally, after three and a half years, Claire was free, breaking free, if you will.
He was still messaging me.
I think I had slept with someone a couple weeks after and he had found out, and he came in swinging.
He was so angry.
The audacity on him to come at me and say, you know you're moving on too fast.
You know, how could you not consider me in this?
And I was just like, you were doing this while we were together for three and a half years, like the autacity for you to come at me right now for doing something like I remember saying to him, like I did this because I wanted to like as much as you want it to be about you, It's not like I wanted to go and do this. It's got nothing to do with you anymore. So I shut him down pretty quick. But I think he just wanted to stay relevant in any way he could. I remember my
last message to him. I just sent him sort of a big paragraph and that was just like, do not take me as sending this message and me wanting any formal contact. I'm telling you now you need to leave me alone or I'll block your number.
Like I was so stern. I was so done.
I don't think I really understood the impact of this relationship until getting into my next one, which wasn't until six years after. So I steered clear of relationships and situationships from that For a good reason.
I had no interest in it.
I think I had a lot of self discovery to do a lot of self estee in building to do. And I think I knew I very well wasn't ready to get into a relationship anytime soon. My friends still talk about it, We still laugh about all the stuff that happened and how crazy I was for not walking away and how brainwashed I was, and we always laughed
about it. But it wasn't until, you know, I got into this new relationship and I have all these trust issues from someone that gives me no reason to not trust them, and he leaves the phone in his room and I just cannot fight, Like all I want to do is check it. So yeah, there's a lot of trust issues that I have to.
Deal with and am still dealing with.
But yeah, I think the years after were I'd never really thought about him again.
To be honest, like I was.
We ended in March of twenty nineteen, and then I packed up and moved to Sydney in October of twenty nineteen, so I never saw him.
It was great.
I never saw him. I never really had to hear from him. I didn't have to hear about him. Actually found out he started working in a sex shop once I left, which is.
On brand good for him him.
He obviously would come home, go home every year for Christmas. The first couple of years, he would message me and ask for me to catch up, and obviously that's like
he's absolutely dreaming. I would run into him occasionally at things like I think there was one time where I just avoided him, like the plague, and then the second time it was at an event and he sort of got me in a corner with one of my best friends and told me how much he regretted it and how much he loved me and wasn't going to find
anyone like me. And keep in mind, this is like five years or four years after we'd broken up, Like he's still will corner me, and he was still to this day messaged me every single day every single year on my birthday, a big paragraph happy.
Birthday, like say hew, do your mom like all that stuff? I'm like, go away. So he wants me to never get over him.
I know most people don't end up with their high school boyfriends, and I think it was such an intense thing to go through at such a young age, and the toxicity of it was so unimaginable. And I think to be under such intense situations at such a young age, you don't really know how to deal with it. At the end of the day, I can look back on it and there's a lot that I can take from, a lot I can learn from it. But I am
happy and I take everything as a learning moment. And to be honest, as horrible as it was, it has shaped me to who I am. I am very resilient now. I can take a lot of emotional hits in day to day life, and as much as it sucked at the time, I can thank him for that. I'm such strong, such an independent, such a vocal person.
So you know, when I'm telling people about this story.
They're just like, I can't imagine you being that situation, And people genuinely are and disbelief. And it's just because at the end of the day, I wasn't that per that I was like, I am who I am now because of what I went through.
But yeah, it is.
It has very much shaped me to be a very strong and assertive person. But yeah, I would never ever put up with that again. And I have such high standards for a relationship now I can safely say I will never watch High School Musical two again.
Just walk away and don't look back.
Everyone has an ex is a Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mum and mea network. It's written and narrated by me Georgia Love and produced by Linda Scott. If you like We've heard, support the podcast by hitting subscribe,
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