You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters. This podcast is recorded on moving in together. Some couples do it quickly, some choose to wait a while. For Fionna and Steve, it was the former, wasting no time in creating their own special memories and routines. Plus, it really is the best way to really get to know someone.
I quite liked that thing of sharing a space, sharing a home, Like when he wasn't as good places and I'd come back and he'd have all the candles lurt and some like jazz music which we used to listen to on and he'd be like reading one of our favorite books, and my dog would be cilled up next to him, and I'd like come in and we're like He's like hey, and everything smells amazing, and I'm just like, yeah, this is so nice.
But even though you share a space, there are always places secrets can be hidden, secrets that, when found, will have you questioning whether you ever really knew that person at all.
I was like, Steve, I know, and then he smiles at men, he goes you went on my iPad. I forgot to eraise them from there. Oh my god. That was his first reaction was the smile at the fact that he'd forgotten or had been caught. The smile shock me to my core.
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, I'm introducing you to Fiona. Fiona looks at her life in two parts BA and AA Before and After Australia. She moved across the ditch from New Zealand.
So I moved and with Lisa, the friend of mine, made a lot of friends. Work was going great, brought my dog over and I was like, yeah, you know, the only thing kind of not necessarily missing but that could be an add on was to meet a man. So I started joining the dating apps and I matched with Steve, who was a musician and my dad's a musician, so a little bit of a connection there. Six foot six, so gorgeous there as well, great looking man, and so yeah,
we matched. We started talking and it turned out that he actually lived about two and a half hours away from me in Sydney, but he'd just been visiting at the time that we'd matched.
They were both thirty, had a heap of shared interests, and as it turned out, very similar lifestyles.
He was well traveled that he moved around a lot as a musician, and my job as a chef means I move around a lot like freelance. Kind of that I understood that lifestyle of not just always being in one place and liked that he would kind of understand that I wouldn't be around all the time either. He mentioned just about his passions for music, that he studied opera and things at school, and I was like, wow,
like it's really interesting. He looks like such a big, buff guy, but he's theater trained and operatraying, and I kind of liked that difference to be evening, like he looks so tough, but you like did ballet at school. Like I'm like, you know, that like mixture for me. I was like, that's very attractive. We chatted for about two weeks and then we organized for him to come and meet me and Sydney and we'd have our first date.
And our first date was actually one of the better first dates that i'd had conversation flowed, and we had a great icebreaker because where he was dressed exactly the same as the matri d e down to like same whose same pants, like same shirt, and they both didn't have hair. So that was, yeah, a great icebreaker, good conversation, like very intellectual, quite funny, had a good head on
his shoulders. I mean being a bit nervous about the musician thing because it can be something that's a bit like touch and go, like where your next paycheck's going to come from. But he treated it like a business and I was like, okay, well that's screaz. That why I do it here, Like I arrive on time, I make sure I never drink on the job. Like he came across very professional. That made like that seem like
a not an issue anymore. We had a little smooch after the date, and then I think we went to one more pub after that and had like a closing drink and watched some live music that was going on, and then yeah, did our good night switch and he went just so you know, I don't sleep with girls on a first date. I wasn't going to sleeve on the first date. Like he was like, oh, well, a lot of girls have a problem that I won't go home with them, like I've I've run into that issue before,
and I said, you don't have that issue. I wasn't inviting you home, Okay, Green Flag for a dating app made up. Fiona was keen to keep chatting and hopefully see him again if she got that often elusive text.
After the first date.
I heard from him straight away and he was very very chatty. We would talk on the phone a lot, said that I was exactly what he'd been looking for. And then I went away for work for four weeks so we couldn't see each other. So it was very like it went straight into being like a long distance relationship. I had done long distance relationships before, but there were things that he added and that I hadn't done before.
So we would like, you can watch a movie together on your phone while on FaceTime, so you can like link your phones together and be on FaceTime and be what it at that exact same time. So when I'd finished work, we'd like share watching movies together and like
chat throughout it and fall asleep. And I was like, it's quite a cute way of like if you're not going to be around each other all the time of being able to like keep it alive when you're like, we've been on one date and now we're not going to see each other for a month, so we're very keen on each other. And then I work on boats.
So I got off the boat for the end of the charter and he picked me up and he had a bottle of wine in the car, and he'd packed like an overnight bag and he took me straight out for this lovely jazz night. Like we had a really nice time, and I'd just come off the boat, so I was pretty naked, but he kept his energy up and I think it kind of bought my energy up as well, and now we just had like a lovely
time together. I had to go back on the boat the next day, and he was going to stay somewhere else, and he did the same thing, like we're not sitch a look, if you're going to sleep in your car, don't worry like I've got a out. You're more than welcome to krash. We've been talking for a month, You've taken me out for this amazing time. You're more than welcome to stay, and don't worry like there's going to be no pressure to do anything. He's like, okay, great.
So he stayed at mine. I had to leave super early in the morning, and I was like, look, let yourself out whenever you want to go, and i'll see you when i'm back.
And see him when she got back.
She did, so probably six weeks in. I was like, I'll introduce you to my friends. So he came and we had like this big dinner party with mimosas, and I cooked and another friend of mine cooked and we just had really nice, wholesome time and he met everyone and he was amazing, Like I thought he was brilliant, and I was like, yeah, like my friends can be quite full on. And I was like yeah, it's like he's handling it and he's thrown it back and I
just thought, yeah, this is it. And then he was like, oh, there's this concert on tonight, Fred again, I've always wanted to see them. Do you want to go? So I
was like, okay, we'll go to this concert. And then on the way there up at me, I left my idea at home and we got to the concert and they were like, you can't get in without ID, and I was like, oh no, So we had to go back to pick it up to then come back again, and I remember feeling really nervous about how we're going to miss half this concert, and he was so calm and cool and collected. He was like, hey, it's a mistake. Things happened, don't worry, Like I'll pay for the ubers,
like it's an accident. We rushed out, like we'll just go get your idea and we'll come back and we'll watch what's there. And for me that was a big thing because I'm a bit airy fairy. I like that someone's like, you know, it's all right, and I liked that it was no like anger or moodiness around it, so I was like, yeah, that's pretty good. And then after the concert he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend, and I was like, yes, okay, let's
do it. He was a very good boyfriend. I can be quite reserved when it comes to my feelings and talking about things, and I think what I really like fell for was him gently pushing me to talk about things. So if I would get quiet because something bugged me or long days, he'd be like, you need to talk about this, like don't just block it.
Up.
You need to talk about these things, like you're gonna feel so much better. And he had like a lot of emotional maturity intelligence. Yeah, And I was like, you know, if that is something that I really want to get
better at. And so that i'd met someone who was like, talk about this or I'd be like if he'd done something that bugged me, and I was like, I don't want to piss you off by telling you that you've done something that bugs me, and he'd like, you need to and then I would and he'd be calm and like, oh, I didn't know that that was a problem, Like I
would just be more conscious of it next time. So for me, I was like, yeah, okay, this is pretty like this is good for what I would like for my future as someone who will encourage me to speak and to speak freely.
It meant that he was a good talker too. He opened up about his past, so she got to know him on a deeper level quite quickly.
He'd had six years long term relationship when they split up. They took a couple of years off and now they were friends and so I was like, okay, well that's good. That seems again emotionally mature because they were quite young at the time that they got together. So I was like, that's a good sign to me. And they're talking bad about one X, I'm like, you know, if there's one, we've all got at least one bad X. That is true.
So I was like, yeah, you know, if you were talking bad about all of them, I'd have a problem. But the fact that it's a standalone then not so much. And he shared some sexual trauma that he had, which was a reason as to why he didn't want to rush into things. And I think, I mean we naturally progressed. I couldn't say exactly when it happened, but it took
some time for him to get comfortable. So there was a lot of like genuinely taking it very slow with the different levels of things, to the extent of like start off with dry humping and then like a bit of a care like it was very much like back in high school, and you're like learning to walk, you're learning to walk that path. The silver lining of us not rushing into sex was the fact that we got to take it slowly, so you get to explore and
know each other properly before you even do that. And also that it meant that he wasn't just looking for one thing and like playing around or faking it to get into my pants. You know, like once he was comfortable, and it still wasn't a big priority to him, so I think, I, well, I came in thinking, you know, once he's comfortable, it'll become something quite frequent, but it still wasn't very frequent, so I was like, it'll get there.
He was very vocal that he was a highly sexual person and really liked it and enjoyed every aspect of it, but that it was just him getting over something, and so I was like, totally fine. So I did see it as something that would happen in the future, that it would be something regular and fun, enjoyable for both of us.
And remember they leaved a couple of hours away from each other, so when they did see each other, they wanted to make the most of it.
He'd come and stay with me for about four or five days while he was in Sydney, and I would go and stay with him two and a half hours away every second week for a weekend around my work, and so we kind of did long distance, but because it was such a long trip, we kind of stayed for a while, and then after I think we were six months in he was getting lots more work in Sydney and I had to move out from Lisa's house
because they were selling the property. So I was looking at moving into a different part of Sydney and thought, why don't we move in together. Then at least we're having the rent and you're staying quite frequently at the moment, and he was like, absolutely, that would be great. Six months and is not a lot of time, but like, I'm very much like if it's gonna work out, it's
gonna work out. If it's not, it's not like you can spend two years not living with someone moving and it doesn't work out, and some people moving straight away and it does. I think if you're compatible living together, you should probably find out sooner rather than later. He worked nights, I work days, but I could join him for his nights, you know, being a musician, and I could go and you know, watch their gize my favorite thing.
I'd bring my crossword or my book and I'd be like the Muzo's girlfriend in the corner doing my crosswords, watching and just being like eh. So I absolutely loved it for that, and then he was home with the dog for the day, and there were so many amazing parts.
But dear listener, when you do move in with someone, no matter how well you know them, it's inevitable you'll learn things about them you didn't know before.
I got the impression from us visiting each other that he was very clean and put together and organized, and I'm very clean and put together and organized. But I didn't realize that when I was coming to visit, he was doing that because I was coming to visit and
it wasn't how he lived. So then when we were actually living together, I'd get drunk because I'd be like, I've made dinner and the dishes are still here in the afternoon the next day, and if I do the dishes, You're like, no, no, no, I'm going to do them. I'm like, but they can't sit there for twelve hours.
And there were things that I'd be like, I don't want a relationship, which I'd been very vocal about the whole time, I don't want to be the mother in this relationship, and tell me that he was such a big gamer, which is one of the things was that. I mean, sometimes i'd come home from work, and he has gotten out of bed and onto the computer, and I've been at work and come back and hasn't moved. And I understand everyone's got hobbies and things that they enjoy,
but six hours of anything is too much. Sometimes he'd be like, you're absolutely right. I've had a shock of a day. I ended up gaming instead of working. I had so much work to do today and I did this instead. And other times he would be like, you're so controlling, Like why do you I feel like kept to control it. This is my house too, If I want to live like that, it would very It would differ depending on his mood for how he would respond.
As adults, I feel like, yes, you can have some days where we've had a rough time and you've skipped the dishes, but every day is not okay, And like I make the bed every morning when I get up, but if you're getting up at ten, you've got to make the bed. I don't want to come home in the afternoon to a bed not made. And they all seemed quite trivial to me, but they are still problems, and they are problems that get worse over time, not better. If they don't like the noil doesn't get hit on
the head. They started happening pretty much straight off the band. There wasn't the honeymoon period of we've just moved in together. How fun is this? I thought it just takes some time to get used to living with each other. To be honest, I think that I'd lived alone for the last few years. He lived in a flatmate situation, but not with the girlfriend for the last few years. So and that's the difference between sharing your space and sharing
your bed and sharing your bathroom. Like that's change. And I think it's an adjustment period for anyone, you know. So I just thought it's going to take some adjusting.
Actually found that I quite liked coming home to someone like I quite liked that thing of sharing a space, sharing a home, like when he was in as good places and I'd come back and he'd have all the candles lit and some like jazz music which we used to listen to on and he'd be like reading one of our favorite books, and my dog would be killed up next to him, and I'd like come in and we're like he's like hey, and everything smells amazing, and
I'm just like, yeah, this is so nice. I mean, take that away, just coming home to a tidy house and someone who's happy to see you. It's like, you know, it's just simple things. So I definitely loved that side of it.
And at the end of the day, she really did love him.
Before we'd moved in, had to have done that. I love you is. He was a very passionate person, and my love for him, like he was very open about his emotions, so my love for him felt very real because there was there was so much depth behind the reasons why I loved him. There wasn't a surface thing. There was like so many things we talked about past and future and family and his family and mine that felt very like intense, but our lives itself weren't necessarily intense.
We were just going through the motions, but they love did for me for sure. He very much felt the same and called me like his dreamer and he loves it because he's always been a dreamer and has so many big plans and I'm just as much of a dreamer than him, but I've got a way to make it happen, and he loves it for me because he never knows quite how to get there, but he'll come to me with his dreams and I'll be like, yes, it sounds amazing. We could put this in place and
do this then. And you know, because I'm a planner, so he was like, yay, you make my dreams feel like they could come true. We had plans to dreams of running like wedding venues. So my parents both have amazing properties, so we were like, we could do a low wedding like me as a chef, him as a musician. Me good at organizing his, like people skills. They've got vineyards, there's like the wine, Like we've got all of the things that together we could come up with this wedding
idea that was definitely one of our dreams. And traveling as well. Both loved to travel.
But the travel plans would have to wait because when Steve did move to Sydney, things got a bit tricky money wise.
I was footing the bill for a lot, and I mean he was very much like I'm going to get there, like I've got this sorted and I'm going to get this, and very much like, yeah, of course you will. I'll put it for now and then you know, we'll just swap rolls a bit later. In your foot everything for then one of our favorite things that we like to do together, me being a chef would be like, let's go out and eat. We'd loved nice food, nice drink,
and environments where there's like live music. That was like our thing that we did together. And stop contributing to things like that while not wanting to stop doing them. His reasons were that his booking agents weren't paying him, so that he had a lot of invoices owing from venues and bookers that just were overdue, and he was like, got thousand dollars owing and no one's paying me. It's so frush. I'm so I'm so sorry. I wish I could be paying for this. We should be paying for that,
but no one is paying me. And I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because I need to be here to be getting the work, but if the work's not paying me, then then I'm stuck. And I was like, you know what, that's actually a really difficult position to be in. So when he would skip, I'd be like, look, as soon as you get paid,
just backlog it kind of thing. It was a stress for me, not necessarily money wise, but for the integrity around being comfortable and happy living with your girlfriend, even though it is quite new. I mean even more so that it is quite new that you are quite happy for them to shoulder an entire rent. He was going out a lot, so he'd like go to his gigs and then come back at like four in the morning and start cooking food and start doing things like that.
And that started being a problem because I'm like, hey, remember you're low on money. You shouldn't be going out for five hours after your work is finished and spending money like and again the mothering thing. I don't want to tell you what to do with your money, but yes,
you should prioritize rent over drinking for five hours. So the little niggling things that were bugging me at the beginning started becoming worse as the time progressed, and I started questioning if it's what I wanted, like for my future. He started being really funny with his phone, which we'd always had like an open phone policy. I've got nothing to hide. You want to put some like, look at some photos, put some music on, like we knew each
other's passwords. And then it started being funny, like I'd go in to change a song or something, and he'd be like, what are you doing, Like I'm entitled to my privacy. I'm like, babe, I'm just changing the song. Or we'd go for like a weekend away and I'd be like, can you send me all the pictures? He'd like, yeah, I'll get around to it. And I think I'll just do it, and I'm like, go in and start sending the photos. He's like, what are you looking for? I
definitely thought he was hiding something. He had a very close relationship with a different ex girlfriend, and I mean, I didn't mind the friendships of the ex girlfriend, but I minded when I started like understanding that she had become his kind of like confident and out like the person he would complain to. Basically, like everyone should have a voice. If you need to complain, telling your friends
is important. I don't think ex girlfriends are the appropriate people to do that with, though, but I think it makes our relationship look weak to someone used to be romantic with, and I just don't. I don't kind of agree, and his like, how am I? Like, we've been friends longer than we were dating, and like, I understand you have enough friends go and talk to another one and that just wants So I thought what was going on with the phone was that he didn't want me to
see that. He was still complaining to her about it. I was just like, I have no interest in going through everything, but now that you're telling me I can't, I really want to go through everything. At no point did I think that he was cheating at all. I thought he was being disloyal to our relationship with his ex girlfriend, just with like how they were communicating. I think I arrive with trust. I mean, he was different.
He said that trust needs to be built, and mine was that you arrive with trust and then it can kind of be lost. If someone doesn't give you a reason, then you should trust him. But I think also making sure you communicate hey, I'm starting not to trust you right now because of this behavior is really important.
There were also issues with sex. Stavid shared that he'd had trauma around this in the past, so Fiona understood and wasn't pushy, but it also did start to play on her mind a bit.
It was very complicated because I would say to look, I don't want to keep trying it on and get rejected. It'll mess with my confidence. And he said, yeah, I completely understand. So I said, so the next time this happens, I need you to be the person who instigates it. And it would take so long, but eventually'd end up instigating at some point and sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, and then I would be like, okay, well it's not working. What do you think the problem is? Like?
How can we get like you happy and horny? And he said, well, I need you to instigate it and I went okay, we are going around in circles. He was like, oh, it's it's such a turn on when people instigate things. I'm like, yes, but then you reject it. So I'm like, so it would just be a catch twenty two am I going to am I going to try this on and it's going to literally flop? Or I'm going to try this on and it's going to work. So it was yeah, it was just you had to take it time by time, you know.
So, yeah, they were his shoes, but they weren't enough to break them. So Fiona thought to herself she needed to stop looking for what was wrong and focus on what was right.
I loved him, I trusted him, and before any of this I thought nothing was going on absolutely nothing.
Wait before what?
So we're ten months and now and I caught him watching a horn of his ex girlfriend in the bathroom, Not of the ex girlfriend he was friends with, but the one that he didn't like, the crazy one was awful, and I was flabb I guess it was an old video that they had from when they were together. It wasn't something new, It was obviously just something that he had stored somewhere and was using while I was asleep.
Fiona had walked in on him in the bathroom in the middle of the night. She didn't say anything at the time because he hadn't seen her, and she was in such shock she just scampered back to bed. She had a huge course the next day and just couldn't deal with this right now.
So I was, you know, like working for all this sex stuff and the problems with like ed because of the past words that I thought was there, and now he's like in the bathroom, able to do it alone over someone that he doesn't even like. I was like, I'm just going to let this sit until I get back from course and then talk about it with him. And then I actually ended up texting a midway through the course, because it was just like boiling up in
me to say something. So I sent a message and I think something along the lines of, hey, this is what you're doing last night, I think that is so disrespectful. After the issues that we've had around sex. I would have hoped that that was not kind of what you would be resorting to do kind of thing, and that like, when I get home, we really need to talk about this.
One of the things that I mentioned to him about it was that like, you're horny and you we released it, hasn't that and then going to that instead of coming to me like that makes me feel rubbish and unattractive and all of the things that you know, we should never feel as women. So I was very much like, yeah, I was put down by it. Let's say it brought me down a peg. He felt really embarrassed about it and uncomfortable, and like he was like, it's the first
time it happened. Like I was just drunk and reminiscing, and you know, you were asleep. The fallout from that was we had the argument. He said he felt horrible. I believed he felt horrible, and we were meant to be going away on a trip like a bit of a road trip for his for his music the next day, and so I kind of made the decision to let
it go and just have our time away. The trip had been planned, we'd hide the car, the dogs that had been organized, and I thought, you know what, just let it go and have a nice weekend and let's see what's happened. Reconvene on the monday, but let's see what happens.
So off they went on their trip, and immediately, if you only could see, Steve was making a real effort to try to make it up to him.
He drove the whole way, which I love. There were little things that I would do for him, which would be like sneaky things, you know, like when you say you're going to the bathroom, but you sneakily pay the bill and then you come back and they're like, can we get the bill, and they're like, it's already been taken care of, you know, like there's like a power
in that that I've always loved doing. Or like someone mentions that they like something in a shop and then you go back and buy it when they're not looking, and then that's a surprise to them. And that weekend he was doing so much of that, and I thought that this was obviously things that he knew that I liked, and also just I feel really bad about what happened,
Like let me make it up to you. So I found an amazing piece of art that I liked in a shop there, and he did the whole like, oh, yeah, I'll catch up with you, bought it and like put it in the passenger seat and was like surprise, and I was like yay, Like that's so nice. Thank you. Like little things and I was like we were in a really good place. There were times that I just
caught myself crying and I couldn't tell why. I didn't know if I was still just kind of getting over or like coping with what i'd found on the have been on the Thursday with the ex girlfriend. But I just found like little pockets would I just be like, oh, and I feel a bit sad, and I was like, these tears are coming out and not much of a cry, and I was like, where are all these tears coming from? But for the most part, it was lovely. The gigs
were great, all the people we met were lovely. It was great to see more of Australia at our final destination. So this is on the Sunday and we were meant to leave at five am on the Monday to get
back to Sydney in time for my work. And we decided to watch parts of the Caribbean on his iPad and so we were lying in bed, had some nice food, had a bit of a cuddle, no shag, but a bit of a cuddle and still nice, spooned up and watched parts of the Caribbean, two of them, and then messages started popping up, not on his phone but on his iPad and they were from his brother. But I didn't realize that you could get messages on your iPad.
He stopped the cuddling and he started like chatting with his brother a fair bit and I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to continue watching the movie. And then messages from Optus started popping up. It was like confirming ten am on Monday morning, and I was like, what's optis? And he goes, oh, it's that telecommunications thing. And I was like, why are they sending you messages about appointments and he went I don't know, like it's Optus And
I was like that seems like a strange thing. He then went to sleep, and I went on to his iPad and looked at what Optus was, and it turned out that it was a wrothel service, and that he had been confirming a sex worker appointment for the morning. We got back the next day and I was just shell shopped. The messages dated back longer than I could read through, sometimes up to four times a week, and their appointments were two hours long. I couldn't actually understand.
It didn't really quite feel real, I suppose because I'm like, this action of frequently visiting sex workers goes against everything that I've known from the moment I met this person. I was like, this feels like fake. I was reading through them, I was like, this has been going on
a very long time. Like the comfortability around it of being like, Okay, well i'll have this one at when I get there at ten, and then maybe we'll swap out halfway through and I'll have this one for the last hour, and I'd be like, you know them all by name? There was like seven of them, like you know them all by name? Who you want to solf out with? Who's on for the dad? The brothel madam would addressing by name like Steve, we appreciate you so much,
like thank you again for coming. I threw up. My body just was not like couldn't handle it. Like I know it was going on in my heart and my head, but my body was just in full shaking and hot flashes and you know, like sweating. I was like, this is like very real responses that were happening to something so emotional that I was like, wow, it feels like it's a full body yeah, full body experience. I was in shock, and I read through them. I realized what
it was. I kind of went into I suppose organization mode. I was like, Okay, well I need to get out of this relationship. I can't have them living with me anymore. We are not going to wait until five am to drive back. This is a five hours away from where we lived. So I was like, I'm going to be stuck in a car off this person for five hours. So I packed our bags up while he's asleep. I took the keys off his key change for the apartment. I think I put most of the things in the car.
I took screenshots on my phone of all of the messages, and I was just like, I need to make sure I have proved so you can't deny it. So I like got it all organized and then I woke them up. I was like, you need to tell me again who is optis? And he went, I've told you and I said who was Optis? And he went on to his phone and he was He was like scrolling through the messages, where's opteras. I was like, Steve, I know, and then he smiles at me and he goes, you went on
my iPad. I forgot to erase them from there. Oh my god. Yeah. That was his first reaction was the smile at the fact that he'd forgotten or he'd been caught. The smile shook me to my core. But he was like, I'm so sorry. Do you want to talk about it? And I said, yes, I want to talk about it. He goes, okay, well, I've had an addiction to this
for a very long time. I thought when we first met that you were going to be the love of my life, and I stopped my addiction for the first I think it was three months, and then when I realized that you weren't the one for me, I decided to go back to it. He told me that he'd lost the feelings for me, and just before we moved in together. So for me to hear that basically us moving in and living together was all it felt like
I was being used. That it was like I was a convenient way to get to where he wanted to be, and that you know, he could skip frints sometimes and he would get free food. And I felt very much in that moment like I have just been taken for a ride. Obviously I'm in tears. Well, we're having this conversation.
I'm saying, I don't understand. You're telling me that you've got this sex addiction and specific sex work addiction and porn addiction, and I'm like, but you have had a girlfriend who adores you, like worship the ground you walk on, being like, let's go in there thebe and you're like, oh, rather not like I don't understand. He tried to explain it away. He wasn't very apologetic, which really shocked me because I wanted a human response and it was frustrating
me that I couldn't get it. So there was a lot of I feel like, I just want you to act human. You have done something awful. I want you to cry, I want you to feel bad about what you've done, Like what you have done is always like, yeah, it's the most hopeful thing I've ever done to someone. To be honest, he was like, but I kind of I kin'd. I wanted to get caught because I didn't know how long I could keep doing this. I mean,
that was probably the hardest part. I know, all of this is horrible, but that was one of the harder parts for me. Was because you know what, sex work is an addiction that quite a lot of guys have. So no, I wouldn't have stayed with him in any way, shape or form, but I did love him, and once I had kind of gotten through everything, if i'd seen like genuine breakdown, fears, emotions, I'm terrified I keep doing this. If it had like shown me some like I'm so vulnerable.
I've been making this mistake for a very long time, throwing me honesty, throwing me that I would have been like, you know what, I will help you through this, but as a friend or in a different capacity that I'm not going to be here as your girlfriend, but you need help. I appear to be the only person in your life who knows about this and so if you want me to help your bloody help you. But the fact that it was just like, h well I've been called now, like that swap of personalities. I didn't know
who I'd been living with. Well, we jumped in the car. Well, to be fair, I said we need to go, We need to go now, and he said I need more sleep before driving. And I said, well, I'm taking the car. Then he said, if you take the car, I will call the police and have you arrested for stealing the car. And I was like, I'm literally stuck five hours away
from home. There is no public transport out here. I can't take the car because absolutely he would have called the police just to be like, I don't know, spiteful in that moment. So he slept for two hours while I sat in the bed next and I'm just I don't know, thinking, probably a bit of sobs here and there. But you could sleep. Yeah, that's another thing that's always creepy. You could sleep no conscience. The drive home was hell.
Don't get being like, this is my hell loop. If I go to Hell, this is what I'm going to be reliving. They're sitting in a car do for these five hours. There are a couple of times where he was like, do you think we'd be able to work through this? And I said no. I did say, I was very vocal throughout is that cheating is my absolute no go. I don't mind if it kues or chay, it's a no go for me. So before we got home got home, I said like, I need you out today.
I was like, like, my name's the only lease on the apartment. He moved in with me. He's got friends yet he doesn't have a full apartment of stuff. But I was like, look, you need to move out today. He's like, okay, it's that good. And then we walked upstairs to the apartment and I saw that he was bringing his bag in and I was like, what are you doing. You have a higher car until three it is now eight am, Like you can just put what you can fit into the high car, drop it to friends,
come get the rest. Do they? And he was like okay? And then he went to use the bathroom and then just left with all of his things there and I was like, he didn't take anything with him, and I called him. I was like, look, Steve, you've got all of these things now in my apartment. You have to be out today and you can't just expect me to be able to move everything out in a day, And I said, I can. This is not an amicable breakup. We are not breaking up because it didn't work out.
We didn't see eye to eye. Paths are going in separate directions. We are breaking up because you have been cheating on me consistently for the last what seven months of our relationship, and you've been paying for it, which was a massive rub with all the money issues that we had been having. I asked him one of the questions on that five hour car ride was how much did this cost? And he said one hundred and forty dollars And I said for how long? It's like for
an hour? It was like for half an hour, so two hundred and eighty dollars an hour, and then going for two hours and going for that much a week. He is spending a fortune, like his rent was one hundred and seventy. It did make me feel icky. It was one of the things that I said to him was that he basically made me fund his addiction, and he was like, what do you mean. I was like, because I was paying for your accommodation and your food
and your everything, so you could afford that. I was funding you cheating on me, like you were basically making me pay for it, because if you were paying for those things yourself, you wouldn't have been able to afford to go. So that you made me fund my own cheating.
It was a lot to try to reckon with, let alone try to move on from. She was sick, confused, and so hurt because at the end of the day she had loved him, so she was heartbroken. On top of all, I don't think I ate for like six days straight.
I was just hollow. I couldn't feel. And also I couldn't drink like normally, if something I have a bad day, give me a glass of wine. I couldn't even like people like get drunk, it'll make you feel better. I couldn't stomach the idea of having a glass of wine or a drink at all. He didn't pack up his stuff. I had to pack it up. He didn't come back till about three days later. I said, look, I'm just gonna put it in the lobby. We've got like a
locked area in the lobby. And I was like, put in the lobby ring up and I'll let you in and you can grab your stuff kind of thing. Three days later when he still wun't come pick it up, and he was like, if you leave my things in the lobby, I will call the police and say that it's been stolen. He was very much getting into like on the offensive. So I would bring it up and then drop it back down and then eventually got it. All.
I found when I was cleaning out all of his things a bag full of pocket puts it, like seven of them. And I think it was such a shock as well because of the sex, because he seemed so low sexual that I'm finding these, like these sex toys
and finding out on this. Actually, on the last day, we had flights booked to go to New Zealand in a month's time to see my family, and he wouldn't give me my flight details because we'd booked it under one thing, and he wouldn't give me the flight details, And he was using that as a bargaining chip as to why I should store his things for longer. So when I found his old phone amongst his things that I was packing up, I was like, I plugged this
and in charge it. I bet it's still attached to his email, and I'm just going to send myself the flights, like then, you can't hold that over me. And I got it plugged in, got it charged passwards the same as the current one, and oh my gosh, it was a treasure trove of information dating back to like twenty sixteen of visiting sex workers and he filmed them, and also he had lots of pictures of the ex girlfriends
on there. I saw him once after that because we'd put our passports together for our New Zealand trip, and when I moved him out, I didn't realize his passport was with mine still, so we had to meet up to do the passport swap over. He seemed very angry at me for telling people, and I was like, why shouldn't I though, like if it was just your story, but you made it my story as well, it's my
story to tell now because you got me involved. But he's still he was very much like well, I think he just so badly wanted to protect that image that he didn't matter what he had done. He'd been living with what he was doing for a very long time, so it wasn't as much of a shock to him as it was to me, but because it was new to me, I was like, no, I need to talk about this. It's going to help me to talk about this.
And I think that he just holds so much anger over that that I should have just let him move on and let him try again with someone new without anyone knowing. It definitely dented my confidence. It's still dented now, but it is it's getting better because I think I've done so much research on it, read up about men who have come up who have these issues and the women who stand by them or don't, and like the effects that it has, and I think it is such
an addiction, like it's not real life. I think because he'd been doing it for so long, a real relationship, not that it was boring, but just wasn't the same. I don't think it's any reflection on me or anyone else who's been through it. Like there will be times that I will still feel super self conscious and a bit low about it, and when I do sleep with someone again, like it'll be like a it's going to have to take my time this time, you know. But I think like at its crux and what my heart
is that it's actually not a reflection. I mean without putting in any work. I think that it then makes it really hard to live a normal life. And I do feel sorry for him for that, like that's going to be a massive issue to overcome. I think that trust in your gut is so important. Like the intuition on women is insane. We have got it just naturally in us. And I think while I was happy and joyful and madly in love, there was something there that I knew was off. I knew something was I couldn't
figure out what it was. And I think that I put these trivial little issues in place to kind of bury bury that emotion and be like, oh, it's just because of this. But I think trust your gut because it's never really wrong. I never thought he was a cheater. I was like, you know what, he's a pain in the ass and he needs to do the dishes more, but he's not a cheater. And I was like, oh my god, you can't be a cheater and not do the dishes like peck one. Yeah, I've gone on a
few dates. I'm very cautious now. I feel like my red flag radar is so high that any little thing I'm like, that's a no. I'm so happy with everything else that I've got going on, and it's a massive bonus that I found out about this. We never had kids, we never got married, it was only a year into the relationship, could have been three easily. If that little thing haven't happened while we're watching a movie, I might not have found out for a very long time. So
thank you, universe. Appreciate that.
Everyone Has an X is a Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mum and Me Network. It's written and narrated by Georgia Love and produced by Linda Scott. If you like We've heard, support the podcast by hitting subscribe,
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