You're listening to a Mother mea podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters. This podcast is recorded on. On this podcast, we've spoken about great relationships, terrible relationships, broken relationships, and all those relationships in between. But there's another kind. We don't talk about that often, perhaps because it's not really a relationship yet we all know about it.
Everyone that we were friends. We knew that we were something, but they didn't know what we were. So it was we were the people that always shed a bed, but we were just friends. But then people didn't really know what was happening. But we were always together and we were always there was always touching and hugging, and people would always ask me, what are you and I'd be like, we're just best best best friends.
That's right, dear listener. This situationship, while not having a title, they can be just as intense, confusing, or consuming and chaotic as something more official. Just ask Amanda.
You don't want to overreact, and you don't want to seeing like you're too into them because they're going to not be into you. And I thought I knew what we were and then at the time I was just utterly confused and utterly panicked. I think about losing something that I had more than anything else. My heart was definitely hurting in a way that I'd never felt it hurt before.
I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an X. 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 lived them. Today's story is about Amanda and Aaron double a buddies at high school, the very best of friends. They really were meant to be.
I met Aaron in huh high school. We were in the same year level, and he went on an excursion with my best friend at the time, and then she came back and she was like, you have to meet this guy. I just know you're going to get along. And then he and I met and we just clicked immediately. And I had this group of girlfriends and we were always together, and then he was leading the guys in a way, so we bonded and formed the group together a little bit. And that was I think year eleven,
so I was seventeen years old. So we started as friends, but it quickly went into best friends and just very close, a little bit maybe competitive with each other, a little bit like enjoying each other's power struggle a little bit in high school as it is. And then I would host a lot of events and the parties, and he would always encourage that, and he would come and bring
all the boys and have fun. Then we got very, very close, and we started to really bond about just our families, and he started to come over to my house a lot and things like that. I think what drew me to him was he had a really like leadership power vibe to him. He was always in control. He was always the coolest guy in the room. He would like tell a joke in the whole room would
laugh at it like one of those guys. And I was really drawn to that because I really thought that, like we were a little bit of a power couple, Like we would not power in the sense of, you know, controlling people with power in the sense of we'd get everyone to come to the parties and to do the things and to do the fun activities. And it was a very drawn to each other. It was probably the year after we finished high school, and it was when I started to spend a lot of time in his house.
And everyone sort of knew we were something without being something, I guess, and everyone could see we were extremely close, and we went to everything together, and we left everything together, and we were always just together. He made me feel very seen, I think, and he made me feel very funny, and he really enjoyed my personality, and he enjoyed my quirks, and he thought that, you know, when I was silly, I was being hilarious, and that made me feel really safe.
And he made me feel very like someone was really looking at me for the first time and just really lacking every single thing about me, which was really enjoy able and quite a dictal to be around.
I think we can all see where this friendship was headed.
My parents went through a really bad divorce when I left you twelve, and I remember my eighteenth birthday was the day that they had to sell my house, and it was this awful, horrible thing. So I was drawn to him and his family because he was very much like, come and spend all your time with us, and he had a beautiful house and we would go and just I'd spend all my time there with his mum and with his brother, and we would just hang out and
I felt very safe there. So it got to a point where, like a couple of years in, I was probably spending four or five nights a week in his house, and when I was there, we always shared a bed and it was always very like loving and couplely, and it was like we were a couple without ever really
being a couple in a way. Definitely started as staying on the couch, staying in like not being together at all, and then it progressed to there was one night we were out at a bar or something, and then we came home and he just sort of went, you've had a really bad day, would you want to stay in
bed with me? And then it went to this really comfy, cuddly placed and then it just became the norm that we were in bed together, and we would even on holidays with friends, we would share a bed together, or he would invite me into the bed and like, but it was always a if you would like to come in, you can sort of thing, and I would always be like, well, I do want to come in, So I would go and get in bed with him. It was very cuddly and very you know, you're safe here if you're not
safe anywhere else. That sort of thing, and we would spend hours in bed just talking and cuddling and just spending time together really and it felt really good at the time if a very like I'd found a person and only I knew that person, and that person wanted me to be there, even if he couldn't admit it to anyone else, he wanted me there sort of. So I was very happy to be there for most of the time, and probably for the first three years, I was very happy to be there just contently in his
little cuddle sort of area. I think I realized I was falling for him at the end of high school, especially when my family break downside to happen. I think he became a really safe place, and I remember remember after a big argument with my family in an awful day, I would just go to his house and he would just take me in and he would just put me in bed with him, and it was this really sweet
moment of just feeling very loved and very safe. About a year into sharing a bed together a couple of nights a week, it was probably the first time something sexual happened, and I was over the moon because I thought he was falling in love with me, and I thought he was into me, and I thought I'd met someone who was playing hard to get, but he made me feel very safe. The vibe the next morning after we did something sexual was pretty chill. Actually, we just
kind of kept going as normal. It felt a bit more cupply. I actually remember we went to a football game. We went straight to we met some friends out and I remember seeing this sort of being like, ooh, that's my guy, because it felt like we were starting a relationship. We were starting something and we were so close at that point because we talked all the time and we were together all the time, and it felt really nice to be in something definitely and like very very connected
to someone. I told him about my feelings. It was sort of a It was a scary moment for me because I wasn't very good at sharing my feelings. I thought it was also just definitely happening naturally by itself. And he would always sort of make jokes about like, oh, I know, you have a crush on me, and I would always be like, oh, yeah, you know a little bit. And it was a bit of a game we were playing with each other. And I did tell him a couple of times oh, I think that I'm really falling
for you. And he would always be like, oh, you're so silly, and like brushed off a little bit. But then it was always the actions were so different. It was always a come and sleep and bear with me afterwards, and then something sexual would happen, and you know that sort of thing. So I always assumed it was always reciprocated, just never able to say it was where we're at.
But a couple of times he did say it. He would say it or he would tell it to someone else and they would tell me, and I was just very like, Oh, we're just in this little thing together.
And this little thing continued for quite some time.
We were about three years in at this point, and we were spending some time with some friends. They were actually doing tough better. We was a normal week. I spent a couple of weeks at night to his house. That week, I had dinner with his family, I was watching TV with his brother and doing these kind of things.
I was really part of his life. And the night we had a big party and I watched him take my best friend into his room to hook up with her, and I just felt something change in my body and I just for the first time felt pure anxiety that I've never felt before, and I remember just sort of looking back and just feeling my whole body start to panic. And he just did it. He just took her in there and he was like, yep, this is what we're
doing and closed the door. And I had to wait for the whole night sleeping on the couch for them too, because I was able to drive home, so I had to sleep on the couch and wait for the next morning for them to reappear. And the whole night I just lay there and just waited with the anxiety just building up inside me. I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know if I should call someone, and then I didn't think. I didn't know if I was
being ridiculous. My best friend and everyone that we were friends. We knew that we were some thing, but they didn't know what we were. So we were the people that always shared a bed, but we were just friends. But then people didn't really know what was happening. But we were always together and we were always there was always touching and hugging in anytime there was alcohol involved. He was way too close to me, and it was always
that sort of. We were very very very close, and no one quite understood, and people would always ask me, what are you and I'd be like, we're just we're just best best best friends, you know, and it was hard to explain what we were. So she thought the same thing. She was like, they're just really really really close, and why would anyone pursue someone if they were with
someone else. He most definitely pursued her, and he made her feel like there was nothing going on between him and I, so she didn't think that there was anything happening between us when she pursued things back with him. I didn't want to overreact. When you're nineteen years old and it's the first boy you've ever had a crush on, you don't want to overreact, and you don't want to seem like you're too into them because they're gonna not be into you. And I thought I knew what we were.
And then at the time, I was just utterly confused and utterly panicked. I think about losing something that I had. So the next morning I drove her home actually, and I went home and I went straight to bed, and I started to just question everything, and I went over and over in my head. I didn't actually even talk
to him the next morning. I just couldn't face it, and I went to bed, and I remember he came over that night and he was just like he just kept asking me what was wrong, and I kept saying, I don't understand why you would have done that, and then he started to get more and more and more angry. And that was the first time I ever saw the anger side of him, which was this I can do anything I want side, and then I have a really
clear image of it in my head. He looked me down in the eye and he was like, I never promised you anything, And that was the first time I really saw that side of him, and it was a whole new side that I never really I was always very safe and very open with him, and then suddenly it was a who were you to think or that
we are anything sort of reaction. And he did say to me, you are making this all up in your head, and at nineteen, I went, I must be making this all up in my head, and so I believed him, and I definitely just spent the next two weeks just trying to dampen down my anxiety and tell myself I was being ridiculous. So I calmed myself down. I went back to normal, and we rebuilt a friendship and I didn't think about it again. And it was different though.
After that, everything was a little bit different. Something was a little bit more. I was trying hard to rebuild a friendship that he was a bit like above me. Now there was something that was different in our dynamic. We didn't agree on what was happening, but we didn't talk about it either. So if I said to him I thought we were becoming something, I thought you had
feelings to me, he would just brush me off. And I didn't want to lose him, so I kept doing what we were doing, and we were just best friends. We just we did pull back. We stopped sharing a bed as much, and we stopped engaging in anything sexual after that that much, and then it became a much more about taking care of me. I think he knew
that I was enjoying having a place to go. I hadn't quite figured out my family situation yet, and so it became much more, Oh, she needs me, so I'm giving this to her.
Soon enough, the sexual side picked back up too.
It stayed as this strange thing that sometimes would happen when we were drinking, or especially if he drank a lot, it would happen all the time, and there would be declarations of love and there would be a lot of things, and it was always like his true feelings came out if he had a little bit of alcohol, but anytime he was sober, he was so controlled and so calculated, and so no, no, no, this is this is what we are sort of thing. And then it became a don't
question it anymore. It became if you want to be in each other's lives, you don't question it anymore. You're just here. But at the same time, we were basically married, like we spent every day together. We did everything together, we were in each other's families, we would go to family functions together. We were talking all day every day. It was a full blown relationship. So I didn't even have any space for anything else because I was in
a relationship with this person. I was so attached to this person and it felt like, yeah, it felt like a full on husband. I was completely in love with him, and I was in love with the idea of our life together, I think, and I didn't want to let that go. And I loved being involved with his family, and I loved being just with him and safe with him. And there was a couple of times where he would tell me he loved me back, and we had these amazing moments, and I just I was completely smitten and
fallen for him. I think my body was reacting more to the ups and downs than my brain was. I think I got very used to ignoring what my gut was telling me, especially after that first time. When I did that on purpose, I would start to get quite sick. I gained weight, I got more and more anxious, and more and more issues like that, and I started to do things like my hair wouldn't grow very quickly, and just I was always just a bit sick and always just a bit off, and my gut was always really bad.
And I remember going to doctors for stomach problems and things like that, and it was usually always your anxious and I would go, I don't know what I'm anxious about, and I would never figure it out. And then a lot of it had to do with this relationship that wasn't really a relationship, but it was just slowly kind
of tearing me apart a little bit. So he simultaneously was my best friend in the entire world, and the person I told everything to and who was there for me all the time, but also the person who was very slowly messing with my confidence and my self esteem
and everything about me, but I never quite noticed. I think I was holding onto the idea of what we could be, and I was holding onto the idea of the safety that I had with him, and I was holding on to the idea of I needed this, I needed this person to survive, and he knew exactly how to make it seem that way too. He knew exactly how to make me feel like, oh, this is this is what I need because I can't function without him.
And he would always sort of do this like you know, I'm here for you, and I'm here for you, and I'd be like, yeah, I know, like it's great, and he would always push that side of things to the point where I didn't even realize how much he was kind of skewing things a little bit. I think I had gotten over the truly deeply first love love for him at that point, but I think I was extremely close to him, and I think I was still in
love with him. It felt like a five ten years in relationship with a husband at that point, because we knew each other so well and we'd gone through things together at that point, and I was deeply in love with him, but he was also just my best friend. He was the person that I wanted to spend all my time with who knew me better than anyone else who I think there was also a sense of panic in it now, a little bit like I couldn't live without him, Like I didn't know what to do without him.
I didn't know how to detach. I didn't know how to be myself, so I needed him.
It was incredibly confusing and seemingly not good for her, but she kept it going as it was because she couldn't bear the thought of losing her person, a concept she didn't think she'd ever have to comprehend until.
Five years after we met. But three years into this very close relationship we had, he found out Who's moving to Sydney for work and he got Groven a great opportunity. I was devastated. I was really, really really upset, and I would cry and I would get really stressed. I would ask a lot of questions about, well, what does that mean for us? And why are you leaving and this sort of thing, and I did get really hurt
by the idea of him leading. And a lot of that was my own anxieties because I'd obviously been through a lot with my family, but it was also just having this person who I don't really know what they are, I am I as close to them as I think I am. He was leaving and I was just devastating.
I was crying. I remember lying on the bed in his house just crying while he was packing the bag, and he was just sort of he was trying to comfort me, but he was also just determined to go, and he really wanted to go, and that was fine, but I felt like I was losing my best friend. Felt like a breakup. It felt like he was leaving me. It was the way that my heart felt like it
was a breakup. It was the person I'd spent all my time with, who was very happily going somewhere else without really thinking about what it meant for anything to do with us. And my heart was definitely hurting in a way that I'd never felt it hurt before because I didn't really know what to do, and when he left, I was very lost. I think is the way to put it, I was very confused and just lonely well than anything else. So the friendship when he moved, it
stayed close as it could. We caught on the phone all day every day. He kept talking to me, we kept doing things. I visited Sydney couple of times with some friends, and when I was there, we would share a bed and we would always cuddle and it would go back to normal when I was there. I remember going to see him, but I would never meet his
Sydney friends. I would never meet anyone. There was a girl in Sydney who he was seeing, and he purposely made sure we'd never met, made sure we didn't and even I do remember asking him, if we are best friends, why don't I get to meet anyone? And he would just be like, you're just going to be over the top about it. And I remember going, well, if you want to be best friends, I should meet the girl, and he was like no, no, no, no, no no. But the way I found out about the girl was he didn't
tell me. I was there visiting him one weekend and we were sharing a bed and we were doing all these things together, and I found her stuff in the bathroom and I found her hairbrush, and I found all these female things, and I went out and was like, are you seeing someone? And he was like, I was waiting for you to find it. And that's how he told me. And I was like, why wouldn't you just tell me straight out? And he basically just said, I just wanted to see what you would do, because I
knew that you'd overreact. And so I slept on the couch that night and I talked to my best friend on the phone and she was saying to me things like, that's just not okay. He should just tell you. He's just messing with you. And I'd go like, oh, maybe you're right, Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he like, you know, he wants to see what I would do, because I have overacted in the past, and I know I can be very anxious.
And was in Sydney for a year, and over that time, Amanda did realize actually she could live without him. God, she missed him, but she survived something that until she was forced to, she didn't know if she could. And then he moved back.
He was in Sydney for a year and then he came back and just settled back into life again. So I was living with two wonderful housemates and I loved there were my guy friends, and I loved them so much. And he was definitely a little jealous of that. I think he thought that I would stop being friends with people without him. And these are people we all went to school with, so they weren't his, they weren't mine. They were very shared and we had a great house dynamic.
I felt very happy and like I had a really great bunch of friends while he was in Sydney, and I was very much myself, I think. And when he came back, he did slip back into sort of coming to things again, and he came back into the friendship group, and he was a little bit I think jealous. It came across as jealousy more than anything else, not that I was friends with them and not him, that I think we were friends without him. He got a place
really close by. It was ridiculously over the top expansive and he didn't need to live there by himself, but he got one really close by because every Monday night we had a dinner with the people that lived in the suburbs we were in close by, and he was not part of those suburbs, and instead of moving to where he used to live, he moved very close and then demanded he was invited. I mentioned to him, like,
this is just something we do. It's been going on for years without you, you know, do you need to do it? And he made me feel so bad about the fact he wasn't invited that eventually he was invited and he was just there. He was part of everything, and it manifested in a more of just a guilt tripping way. Every now and then it was just a oh, I'm doing this, Oh well, I want to come. So he was at everything all the time. He would say, you know, I want to spend time together. While we
spending time together, and I would have him there. So he was always at my house, he was always around. He started to be at everything again. I definitely was like, oh, he's missed me and he's come back from Sydney. You know, he wants to spend time with me again, and here we are, and this is this is going to be great. And I wanted him around. I missed him. It was
it was my close person. He was the person in the room who whenever I was talking and like, you feel a little bit alone because you're in a room full of people, he'd like lock eyes with you, and he was the one that saw you. He was that guy in my life. A lot of my friends were, you know, getting engaged in doing the things you do, and I was going, it's okay, it's okay, I have this guy, and this guy has me, and every part
of it was an emotional relationship. It was we went immediately back into being those close, close people who spent all that time together, who talked NonStop, who were just not seeing other people. He never saw anyone else, and I never saw anyone else, And like I would go and you know, have casual relationships here and there with people, but I never connected emotionally to anyone else the whole time.
And he hated everyone I ever went and saw, and I never knew about anything that he was doing, and if I did, it was always this I knew you'd be jealous reaction.
One thing that did change, though, when Aaron came back from Sydney, they stopped hooking up.
I did reach a point of I just need to be friends with this guy. But it was not a
normal friendship in any way. There was just so much emotional connection there, and there was so much closeness, and there was so much getting drunk at a party and still sort of saying stupid things to each other, and he would be it was character party one time and I was singing and he was sitting on a seat so close to me and staring up at me, drunk, and all my friends are like, that guy's in love with you, and I was like, yep, but what does that matter now, Like he's not gonna say himself. So
it was just this constant everyone knew it. I thought I knew it. Thing that was happening all the time.
So when Amanda found out her housemates were moving out, it was totally fine for Aaron to move in, right right.
My best friend told me not to do it, My housemates told me not to do it, and I told everyone, no, no, no, we are so fine. It's gonna be so great. We're in a really great place. I'm really in control of it. Everything's fine. And he moved in. It was really fun. I had my best friend in the house, so we played a lot of video games and we had a lot of people over and we hung out and we
knew how to get along really well. And he got a puppy, which she was amazing, and I got to help raise the puppy, and it was it was great. He was having my best friend around and it was always someone that was there. That was the thing. It was because it was also COVID. We were working from home, and I would just go into his study and I would just sit on his couch, and whenever things were wrong, my best friend was right there next to me, and it was so easy to have him around. I definitely
started to develop feelings again for him. I think we both kept it very separate because there was also at that point a part of my gut which was like, don't you can't do that again. I think maybe my body had learned by that point a little bit more, but I was starting to see some cracks growing. So even though my heart was like, this is the guy for you, there was something in like my gut and
my head's saying, don't cross online. But you know that being said, we were cuddling on the couch and we were hugging five times a day, and we were, you know, attached to each other, and we were doing everything together. So I was basically married at that point. We were just sleeping in separate beds is kind of what it felt like. We were cooking for each other, like it wasn't exactly like we were housemates. I'd had male housemates, and this was very different.
And they didn't cross the line, I mean, depending where you see that line as being, but they continued on as they always had. The relationship, though, wasn't the only thing on Amanda's mind at that time. There was something in her life that became a much bigger issue.
In twenty eighteen, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. It started off as breast cancer. So she just found a lump in the shower one day and went in and they found two different sides and it was awful when I did find that out. He was in Sydney, so I sort of did a lot of that by myself, and he was there and that sort of stuff. But across the years, my mother's eldest progressed and kept growing and they kept finding things, and so started twenty twenty four,
her illness had gotten way worse. She was died of with brain cancer and she got taken her to hospital in about February and she basically was told she had about six weeks to live after that, so I said, step away from the house more and more, and my sister and I were going into the hospice every day. At that point, my cousin had actually moved in with us. She had gone through a horrible divorce herself, and I basically was like, look, I have a place to stay.
It's a safe place for you. It's somewhere that's not going home to your parents, you know. Would you like to come in? Would you like to come live with me? She was my cousin. I wanted her to have a place to go. So Stephanie moved in with me and Aaron. We had always been close, but never like like great friends close, and she left that relationship and we decided to build a friendship up. So I saw it as a really good opportunity to have someone that I was
close to in the house. And Aaron and I lived there together for a really long time, so we would set in our ways and I didn't see it as an issue originally. It all went really well. She moved in, We got along out, the dogs all got along. We were a cute, little happy family. We went and played tennis a lot. We did a lot of things that were great. The three of us got along really well, and she was really excited to be there. She had a lot of time for him. She found him really funny,
she found him really great. He was selling the funniest guy in the room, and he was the coolest guy in the room, and she wanted to do what he wanted to do. And I just started to notice, and I did comment to a friend of mine, she reminds me of me when I was seventeen. It started to instead of just being friends' housemate vibe sort of thing. She started to really want to become close to him
very quickly. She started to sort of really want to be in every conversation and if ever, he and I went and had a private conversation with the door closed about anything really was we were leaving her out and why are we doing that? And she should be in there too. When I wasn't at the hospital or at the hospice, I was spending time with them, and it was this kind of strange universe where they were being really close to me and really like being friends with me.
But then stuff was going on, Like there was one time they wanted to watch a horror film and I was like, look, I spent the day in a hospice. Can we maybe chill it out and not, you know, do that. And he got so angry and he was like oh and just went into his room and then he started messaging me, this is what I'm talking about. You're just such a down or you're such a drag,
like you just ruined things. And I started to cry on the couch and I showed my cousin the photos, like the photos of the messages that he was sending, and she was just like, oh, I don't know, like you know, it's a bit. She just kind of didn't quite she said it was wrong, but she didn't quite react to it. And then he came back out was like, let's go outside and do this thing instead, and she went off and did it with him. And I remember going outside crying and being like, so am I supposed
to join in? Or how is it working now? And I was really angry and he was just sort of like, yeah, come join in, and then I was just kind of happy to be there. So I said nothing for the rest of the night, and I kept wondering if I was grieving and emotional and anxious, and there was so much going on that. I was questioning myself a lot. I can't even describe it, like there was this strange vibe in the house. They were being weird with each other. She was being very, very keen to be very close
to him. So he went through a bit of a family situation at that time with some illness, and I would go along a little bit to the hospital. But I also knew him at that point for ten years, and I'd known his family, and I was very close to his family, and she would get a little bit upset that she wasn't invined to come, and she'd send things like, oh, if you guys are going to go do that, then oh should I come over? And I was a bit like, you've only known him for about
a month, like not quite understanding. But every time I brought it up to him, he would just be like, you're just jealous. I didn't want my relationship with my family to be tainted. I did say to him, look, she's my family, and I remember saying to him, please don't mess with my family, like straight out, and he was sort of a bit angry about that. He was a bit like, well, who are you to give me,
you know, tell me what to do. I was like, if you want to stay friends, we just need to have I think I said highness, respect and consideration for each other, and he was like, I can't do that. The next thing that happened was, unfortunately my mother passed away. He was supportive, he was there. He turned up at the hospice the day it all happened and he gave
me a big hug. But three days later, I was doing her photo tribute and I was borrowing his laptop to do it, and Aaron and Stephanie went to the shops together and I was on the laptop at the house and I was just I was basically tired, just trying to get this thing done for my mum's funeral, and their Facebook chat popped up on the screen. And
I am not proud of it. I'd never been the type of person to want to snoop into a phone or to ask a guy to show me his phone or be that way, but I just had this feeling. I just immediately was like, you know, I'm gonna do it because and I did it, and I'm not I am not that person, but I'm so glad I did because it was the moment I saw what they were
talking about. I never felt less crazy. They were calling me crazy Amanda every time, and they were talking about how crazy Amanda that morning did this, and crazy Amanda that morning did that, And the mornings that I was going off to the hospice and doing things like that, they were calling me crazy all the time and about how I would overreact, and you know, they would do things like they'd make plans to go and go to places and then they wouldn't tell me, and then I
would feel left out, so I'd ask them like why and I'm not invited? And it was crazy. Amanda attacked me today about this. They were just bonding so hard about me being the worst person in the world, and he was creating situations that made me look like the worst person in the world, and I was buying into
them every time. And the horror movie thing, I realized, was another one of those where I was confused because I didn't know what I'd done wrong, but he was just making it seem like his life was so awful having to deal with me, and she would say, I'm so sorry you have to deal with her. In the conversation. I was very, very very hurt, but that wasn't all. I saw that they were sexting each other on the chats.
I didn't read the sex specifically, but I didn't really want to know the details, but I did see that it was sexual. But I mostly also just saw them
planning to lie about it. So the messages that I saw were the two of them sort of just openly saying that they can't tell me and they don't want to tell me, and you know, just keep just keep lying to where it's okay, you know that sort of those sort of messages, and I just I knew, you know, I did see him say something to her about keeping it secret, and she's saying something back about calling him
sir and he doesn't want to. They had set up this dynamic which was just and honestly, it felt like they set up a dynamic which was me when I was seventeen meeting him, and I kind of just knew
what was happening because I'd lived it before. So they did come home and I actually, quite calmly just sort of said are you two hooking up into the room, and he was like no, no, no, no, no, no no, And then she wouldn't look at me, and she was putting the shopping away, and you could tell she was very stressed and a little like sort of waiting to know what to say. And he looked me down in the eye and he kind of looked at me and he was like,
what have you done? I remember he was leaning on the kitchen bench and I watched his eyes like change into this fight mode a little bit, and then she said, well, why is it your business? I felt angry, and I felt sad, incredibly sad, but it was actually more energy than I had had in a long time. I was still grieving and I was still extremely heartbroken about my mum, but it was this clarity that I finally needed. I felt like something just changed in my body a little bit.
But I you know, I went from having massive cries and massive just what is going on? Because I just lost someone and I was losing other people. And then I went from just being so rage driven adrenaline running around and like wanting to know answers. And I left and I went to my friend's house and well, actually she picked me up and we drove around and we talked and I just told her everything and she was
just like, what is going on? And I called my ex housemates on a grip chat and I actually remember saying to them, I need you to tell me if I'm crazy, and they're like, what do you mean? And I was like, I'm feeling like this was really bad, but am I overreacting? And they're just like, no, you're not overreacting. And I needed someone to tell me that before I could, you know, figure that out. And I needed my best friend to tell me that. So I called her and she was like, I hate this guy,
you know. She was so done, and she was just like, this is what keeps happening. And the fact that you're even having to ask people if your reaction is too much, because I was in a house with people who were telling me it was too much, like what have you done? Like why are you even thinking that this is bad behavior? And so to the point where I didn't know what
I was supposed to feel anymore. And I stayed at my sister's house for a couple of days and tried to stay away, tried to plan the funeral, do all the things we were doing, and they kind of did nothing. We didn't really interact. I just kind of went, I have to do what I have to do, right now and I can't focus on this. The next day is a kind of a blur, to be honest. I stayed at my sister's house. I hid, I planned a funeral, which was awful. The day of the funeral, I was
just kind of I was at home. I just remember being alone. Mostly they were just very much just with each other. They were just kind of only focusing on each other. She was really focusing on him, And I remember the morning of I was getting ready and doing stuff, and I was like, I just feel very alone in this day, like no one's gone. Today is the day of your mother's funeral. Do you want a cup of tea? Like? I just did all these things alone. But I just
did them. And I had my sister and my best friend flew in from New York, which was beautiful, and I was very lucky to have a very great group of friends around me who had had for years, and they just bolstered me up. But three days after the funeral, we got through the funeral, he did come. I did actually ask him to come. I remember messaging him and just being like, look, I just don't know how to do it without you. Can you just turn up? He came.
He sat on the other side of the room to my friends and we hiled goodbye, and that was the last time we hugged ever since. But and his brother came and you know, it was it was almost like pause, just pause for that day. I spent the next three days just doing things. People were really kind to us, and like, spent time with friends and just tried to calm down. I remember messaging them three days after the funeral and I said to them, I'm coming home. I know we have stuff to talk about and sort out
and figure out. I have to start work tomorrow. I'm doing my best. Just leave me alone, Please, just leave me alone. My sister took me home. She took me upstairs to my room, and I just I was sort of like, I'm just gonna have a shower. I'm just gonna just chill into the day and try and regroup for tomorrow. Maybe wash my hair, you know, the small things you can do when you're green. And it's an awful time. And so I told her to leave. The
second she was at the door. They appeared at my door holding a phone and they're like, I know you didn't want to be doing anything today, so you don't have to we don't have to have a conversation, but just so you know, we're going to send this message. And then they pressed send at the door, and my phone buzzed and they started a new chat with all my friends and me in it. The first sentence of the chat was, it's been four days, so now you know it's been a respectful amount of time, so now
we can do this. Basically, he's telling their side of the story, which was basically a huge, long punch of paragraphs about how awful I was. And he started to talk about how when he hooked up with my friend, I tried to control him. He's had to deal with me for years. It was this just paragraphs long. It was ranting message about like our entire history of everything that was bad, about how he'd had to put up with me for years, everything I'd ever said about anyone
in the Green that was negative anyway. He just defamed so hard. And the worst bit is that my cousin pressed send straight after him and sent a message in the chat with all my friends in it, saying her side of the story, which is apparently that I never made her feel welcome and I never wanted her there, and I never wanted it, Like I was never a nice person to her, and I never wanted them to
be together. And I was always this and that, them backpedaling basically, and to try and just take all the blame off them, to try and justify everything they'd been doing, to try to make me out to be the crazy one in the situation. I think for him it was a desperate attempt to salvage his friendships, because at that point a lot of my friends decided to see what was going on and were feeling quite done with it too, and they had seen me be really hurt by him.
The message also hadn't it this is our home, so if you would like to come and see Amanda, you need to ask permission before entering the house. So at that point I went, I'm now being isolated away from my friends because they have to ask permission to even spend time with me. My friends, bless them, They just responded with, look, this is a trying time. We're trying to help her through this. This doesn't seem like our problem, and they all just left the chat. So I called
my sister. She came straight back and we sat around the dining room table and I begged him to leave. I remember I was looking at him to take in the eye, and I was like, you just need to move out. I'm just I'm so done. Can you please just leave? Like the house we were in I had lived in for years before he moved in with the boys. It was my place more than theirs, and I just sort of went, I will pay what I need to pay, I will do what I have to do. Please just leave.
I'm just so done. And he smiled at me across the table and he looked at me in this way of just like pity, I guess, or this way of just like I don't know. It's like he was not the same person is then that I can describe it. His eyes were different, all the softness was gone. He just sat there and he didn't really react. He just kind of smiled. And my sister did actually say to him, you are a cancer in my sister's life, which is a huge thing to say after your mother's just passed
away from cancer. And my cousin was there, she was in the kitchen, she was watching. We did say to her a couple of times like do you see this, Like do you see what's happening? And she a couple of times said, I don't see a problem, and she a couple of times said. I did say to her, she doesn't have to leave, and she said, if he leaves,
I have to leave. And I said to her, I have been you, I have been you, and it ends in this awful way because he discards you, and you're watching that happen right now, and she just couldn't see it. She just couldn't see it. So I ended up having to just sort of say fine, go to the both of them, and she was quite angry, and the next couple of weeks was trying to figure out the logistics of getting them out. I felt very done. I felt pretty empty, to be honest, Like it was very hurtful
and it was very was also not surprising. I think I knew him so well at that point that him doing that to me was just like, oh, yep, this is exactly what he would do situation. But it also was my best friend in life just absolutely disgarding me, and it was brutal and it was I cried, and I just I didn't know how to take the amount of grief I think I was feeling the couple of weeks it took to settle things down. I feel like
I was just running straight on adrenaline. I was so heavily grieving both my mother and just even just in shock. I think about my mother's death and how fast it was and the trauma of it all, and dealing with that, and then dealing with my sister who had to go back to where she was and trying to deal with that, and then dealing with his home life, which was just awful. I was mostly sad. I just cried and cried and cried.
And there was one night I came home and he was spending time with my family and I was not welcome to join, and then my family members were there and I just kind of lost it that night. I remember sobbing in my room, like just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, and he texted me and he said, can you please be quiet? And then I just stopped crying, like something just I just sort of went, what the hell are you crying for over this guy who doesn't
care about you? And I don't know what it was, something just I just stopped crying and then I just went into Okay, we're done. I don't know what changed it was just hidden texting with zero care whatsoever. I think I kept thinking if I was if I showed how sad I was, or if I showed stuff, he would crack and go back into that guy he was. But it was gone. It was completely gone. This person that had been my constant companion basically for twelve years and my best friend and my safe place was gone.
And I didn't quite know how to function without him, or how to be an adult, or how to how to think without him, or how to to trust the
world without him. Eventually, when they did move out, I was in this big house by myself, and I was happy to be there by myself, to be I'm not happy, but I was relieved to be by myself because for the first time in a long time, I was like very trusting of my own thoughts, and I didn't realize how much I had been just slowly messed with across like years and months at that point and just hard gas lit to be honest, and like it was a relief, and I threw myself into work, and I threw myself
into building a life for myself again and just trying to process everything that had happened, and so it was an awful time, but it was this, it sounds strange, almost a relief. So since all of that went down, I've really thrown myself into work. I've been trying to process grief a lot, which has been really hard. I'm still trying to that. I met a guy at work who has been lovely, but again, he was extremely unemotionally unavailable. I realized that it was the love I was used to.
It was someone so unavailable and me having to like prove they should pick me. So I very quickly went, oh, hold on, no, no, no. But it was actually also quite nice to be with someone who really wanted me back. So it was it was a learning opportunity. But life since then has been it's been pretty good. I've been trying. I've been working really hard. I've been doing a lot of things, a lot of grief, a lot of trying to manage the hardest part, which is that he is
still with my family. So my sister and I spent Christians for the first time member without our family. We've spent it with other family, but it was the first time without them. But yeah, so he's still infected the little bits in things, but I don't talk to him or go anywhere near human. I would love to talk to my cousin again, but while she's talking to him, I can't go anywhere ney that because it's just too much. But I think I see it a little bit as
two people who or at least maybe from her. I don't know her perspective, but it's someone who maybe has not done the right thing and doesn't want to face it, and so she's in a bit of a situation. But yeah, he's still very much. He's in my family, which is a bit gross. So I'm trying to stay away from that. But for me personally, I'm a lot better without him and even grieving even when horrible things happen. I've had to move house, I've had to do like big things.
I have never wanted him back in any way, Like there's no part of me that missus. I miss my friend, I miss you know, the person who used to spend a lot of time with. But I don't want that back ever again, because I'm just I'm over it. I'm just over being confused all the time and told I'm not good enough all the time and that sort of thing. So we're in a journey. We're in a healing journey, is how I would put it. Now. The future is a lot of healing and a lot of slowing down
and a lot of taking care of myself. But I want to keep working and I want to eventually find a good relationship, and I would love to be with someone who is completely opposite. I want to be in a really great thing and I want to feel very safe in something, but I want to feel like myself in something. For him, I don't really wish anything for him.
For her, it's very different. I don't want her to go through what I've been through, and I just have this feeling it's going to happen because it's a pattern, and I'm watching her just be like, this is my guy now, and it's just not She can't see it. I could see it because i'd been there and I had been her. I want her to be happy and I want her to be back in my life, I think. But it's just it's just I can't force something to happen. I have to just sit back and watch and just
tell my story and hope that it works out. But so if they ever are not together, I will happily see my cousin again, but I don't want anything to do with him, and if they do choose to be together, then I hope that he changes his ways and makes her very happy. Right now, my focus is on my personal healing and trying to grieve and trying to process what happened to my mother and focus on myself as much as I can.
Everyone Has an X 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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