The Long Game

I was really involved with my sister's friends. You know, she had a lot of gay friends, a lot of lesbian friends, and yeah, we had a great, big group of friends and we had a lot of parties at our house. Yeah, and that's how I met Jason.

hadn't really had before I was only eighteen. You know, he was interested in me in like wanting to get to know me, and he wanted to buy me a drink, he wanted to dance with me, and yeah, I'd never really experienced that before. It was all very new, and I liked the attention to be honest, and he was more masculine than my friends were, So I was drawn to him for that reason, especially because I'm straight and I thought he was a straight man like in our

friendship group. But when I got to talking to him, I found out that he actually was gay.

how we first met. And actually that first night, we went out clubbing, like on Oxford Street, and we were quite drawn to each other. And I don't necessarily know why, but he took a liking to me, like he was quite affectionate, quite off the bat, like in terms of, you know, holding hands and putting his arm around me, you know, just like dancing in the nightclub and stuff. He was just another one of our gay friends, you know, at the party, and he had a boyfriend. So I

wasn't interested in him like that at all. We actually clicked from that first night because the very next day, like our friends went to the beach and we all hung out together that same day and he was there, and that's where I had the opportunity to kind of talk to him and get to know him a little bit more on a friendship basis.

he moved in straight away. Pretty much, I just thought I'd be living with my friend and it was just going to be the same as living with any other friend really. But when he moved in, we just became best of friends, like almost overnight. And it was because, like I said before, he showed so much interest in my life. He wanted to go and do the things that I enjoyed. He wanted to go for runs on the beach and things like that, all the things that I really liked to do. We grew to be best

friends really really quickly. Like we did everything together. We went out for dinners together, and people did think that we were a couple because we were always together. He was really affectionate with me when we'd go out in public. We held hands and you know, he would put his arms around me and I loved that, but he was still seeing other men. I was seeing dating guys at the time, and we would sometimes hang out together in groups when we were dating other people. We would go

on double dates and it was really fun. But everyone knew that with me came Jason, my gay best friend. Everyone knew that. Everyone who I dated knew that I was going to be with my gay best friend no matter what. And you know, my relationships didn't last, and sometimes it was because of that. They thought they were third wheeling with Jason. Because Jason was so involved in

my life and every aspect of my life. Most of the time, the guys that I was dating felt uncomfortable around him, especially because he was so affectionate, and you know, he would tell me that he loved me in front of like guys. Yeah, people just they just were uncomfortable with that. Jason was very similar. He had short flings with guys, like he would meet guys online or meet guys out clubbing, and it would be a couple of weeks, and sometimes they would feel the same way about me.

You know, they would be like, why is Lauren always here? Why can't we go out just us, like without Lauren? But Jason would want me to be there. He would always invite me, and sometimes we would have plans and then he would invite his boyfriend at the time to be like, do you want to do this with Lauren? And I yeah, And so nothing ever really stuck with

either of us, and we bonded over that. I think, like, you know, when a relationship would break down, we would comfort each other, we would talk about it, you know, we would be like scrolling on Tinder together, like, you know, trying to set each other up with other people. That was a really normal part of our friendship. And I almost felt like if I was seeing someone and Jason didn't accept them, I wouldn't even give them the time of day, Like his opinion meant everything to me. He

felt the same way as well. Honestly, it didn't bother me because I felt I had everything that I wanted from Jason. Although it wasn't sexual, we did have a deep love for each other and the friendship was fulfilling.

The friendship intensified pretty quickly. Jason started working in the minds over in wa and he would do swings that would last for six sometimes eight weeks, so I would be instidity by myself in our apartment, but we would be texting and like calling each other, skyping each other, video skyping each other, like twenty for seven while I was at work, you know, at night he would call me in the middle of the night when he started a shift just to say like, hey, I'm studying my shift.

Hope you have a good day. But the things that we would talk about while he was away, it started to get really deep and personal, Like he started to talk to me about his childhood and growing up in a religious family and how he could never come out to his family. That was a really big thing for him. And yeah, it was important to me to help him through that because I really cared about him. His sexuality was a secret to his family. He wasn't from Sydney,

and yeah, his family didn't come to visit. He was very active in the LGBTQ plus community and obviously dating man in Sydney. He would go to Mardi Gras and he would get dressed up and all that kind of stuff, which was like really normal to us. And it wasn't until he was working in the Minds and I guess he started spending more time alone and away from us and the comfort of his friends and the community that

he knew and loved. That he started to open up a bit more about his family, is upbringing, his childhood, about you know, not being out to his family, and growing up in a religious household. When we would have these late night calls and even just through messaging, he would tell me a lot about his experiences growing up in a church and growing up in a private Catholic school, and just how much shame he felt about his sexuality and he felt that his family would completely disown him

if they found out. And that really took an effect on him as he was telling me, because he told me he'd never spoken to anybody else about this, and that it meant a lot to him that I was able to help him through it, you know. And sometimes he wouldn't come home for a month, sometimes six weeks, and when he'd get home, he would just be so relieved that he was able to, you know, live his true self because working in the minds, he kind of put on this front to be the kind of FIFO

worker persona that wasn't really him. Yeah, So when he would come back home to Sydney. We would do all the great things that we enjoyed. We would go out and see all of our friends and have a good time. That was that's what made him happy. And then when he would go back, he would like cry to me because he had to go back to this secret life

that he hated. It broke my heart because and especially myself, like having my sister, you know, if that was my sister, and I knew that he was happy living that lifestyle, so it did really break my heart knowing that his family didn't really know the real him.

money and the lifestyle that he had. On his weeks off, you know, he would work really hard for four weeks and then he would come home for four weeks, or sometimes we would go to Fiji for a week, or sometimes while he was at work, we would be talking about how much we wanted to go to Bali, and so he would book a trip to Bali and I would meet him there after his swing would finish. That's the kind of person he was, like, he went above and beyond for me. It was never an issue for him.

He wanted to do the things that I enjoyed, and he enjoyed them as well. You know, that's just what we really liked to do. So for about a year of him working in the mines, if he wasn't coming home, we were traveling together. He loved spoiling me as well, where he would come home with gifts. We would come home with like perfume, and he'd send flowers to the house. Like he was everything I really needed. I was getting everything I ever wanted from a relationship, even financially. He

was taking care of me financially. He was paying for our rent and all of our bills and everything. Anything I wanted I could ask him and he would help me. It was honestly the perfect relationship, except we weren't having sex. After about six months of his four weeks on four weeks off swing, the conversations and our communication started to get a bit more like talking about our life goals, talking about where we want to be in the future. Jason started to talk about wanting to have a family

and wanting to have kids. You know, he was much older than me, and at twenty one twenty two, that just never crossed my mind to thinking about kids. But you know, once he dropped the topic on me, it was all we talked about. He felt a really strong pull to having a kid or a couple of kids, and yeah, I was just entertaining the idea of maybe having a baby with my gay best friend. I mean,

we did everything else together. And yeah, he would kind of tell me like, well, if you don't meet anyone before you turn thirty, will you have a baby with me? And I thought about him. I did really think, yeah, why not. I mean I don't have anything else going on or anybody else to have a baby with. And I could see how great of a provider he was, and I did see him as being a really good father as well. So yeah, it was something that became an important part of our friendship.

getting to know me like I was his girlfriend. It was almost because we had to play this relationship in front of them. But during that time, I just fell in love with him. I fell in love with the idea of like being his girlfriend for real, not just in front of his parents. And you know, even when we weren't around his parents during that week, he still treated me like I was his girlfriend. We'd go out

for dinners together and he was a gentleman. He would open the doors and pull the chair out and actually pay attention to me, listen to me and what I had to say. It wasn't like he was being my boyfriend in front of his mum and dad. And then as soon as they went around, he'd go, oh, anyway, like let's go back to you know, talking about boys and things like that. It wasn't like that at all. In the back of my mind, I just thought, no, no way, like it's impossible, you know, like he's a gay man.

city after that and we got really drunk. He was just buying me drink after drink after drink, and that was kind of normal, and we must have been out all night dancing, and when we got home we ended up kissing. I pushed him away because I thought, no, like, we're gonna ruin things. You know, this is going to ruin our friendship, and I thought maybe he was just like being silly in the moment because we had had

a few drinks. But he actually said to me like, nah, I actually want this, and I feel like you do too, and yeah, so it happened. We ended up sleeping together that night. In the morning, we both woke up in my bed completely naked, and I just freaked out. I got dressed so fast and I left the building and I called my sister freaking out because I just thought, what have we done? Like We've ruined everything. It's never

going to be the same again. There was a part of me that was like, oh my god, I can't believe it, Like it's happening, Like maybe he is really into me, maybe we are going to have a baby together. And then there was another part of me that was completely in denial because he was a gay man and he like, we had just had a few drinks, so I felt like, oh, nah, he's going to have regrets in the morning. He's gonna want to move out and

not want to ever speak to me again. I don't know. Yeah, my head was like spinning at that point.

never happens. So, I mean, we did live together, so I had to go back to the apartment pretty quickly. He slept all day that day. He was super hungover, I remember because he woke up and it was like the next night and I said to him, like, do you want to have a chat? Like do you want to talk about what happened? And he just had the biggest smile on his face and he was like, no, do you And I just looked at him and I said, no, We'll just leave it for the night, and yeah, and

we did. We just like went back to our normal life, but because he had just gotten back from work, we had two weeks together with no distractions, no plans or anything, so we did take that time to talk about everything. I think we were just talking about the first night and I asked him, like, you know, how did it make you feel because you've never been with a woman before, and yeah, in that time, he expressed to me that

it wasn't about my gender, wasn't about sexuality. It was more about our connection and how much we loved each other. And he told me that he was comfortable, and we slept together a couple more times. We hadn't really talked about what we were We just wanted to let it happen organically. Yes, so it progressed pretty quickly. So the more we talked about having sex, the more sex we had.

And then he went back to work and everything remained the same apart from the fact that we had slept together, and our conversations started to turn more into sexting, video chat, sending a few pics air in there, and that was basically it. We stopped talking about childhood, Trauman, we started talking about having sex pretty much, and that was basically our life for about three to four months. He would go to work, he would come home, we would hook

up and do the things that we enjoyed. We lived like we were together, but we never had a conversation about it during that time until I asked him, am I a girlfriend? Because we seem to be doing everything that boyfriends and girlfriends do. And he just looked at me and he was like, honestly, I love you so much, and I don't want to be with anybody else, and I don't want you to be with anybody else, So if you're cool with that, then that's us. We're together.

I was elated because never in a million years did I think that our friendship would turn into a full blown relationship where we just loved each other that much. And it was amazing, Like we were really happy, and all of our friends knew, our families knew, yeah, and everyone was quite cool about it. There were a few people, my mom and my sister included, who were concerned that

I was not in a good spot. My sister and my mom were quite concerned about our relationship because Jason he wanted all of my time and attention, and that meant taking it away from others, or you know, he would want to one up them. If my family was going on holiday, he would want to take me to Thailand. He would, you know, always want to present something better. And because of the way I felt about him, I

would accept his invite over others. And yeah, that really bothered my sister especially, and she was quite concerned about our age gap, how naive I was, or how innocent I was, and she felt that he was buying my love. I would say, you know, you don't know him like I do. You don't know you know what he's been through, you don't know his background and his family. I'm all he has. I would do anything for him, and he

would do the same thing for me. And I would tell my sister if there's anything that you need, if you needed something in the middle of the night, Jason would be there for you because he loves me that much. And my sister just allowed it because she wanted to be at least a little bit of part of my life rather than nothing at all. My Mom's not a crude. My mom is very open about sex and always has been, and she has a very colorful sex life, and you know,

she's very open. So when I said to her, like I'm hooking up Jason, I hooken up, and she was like, oh, yeah, okay, that's pretty cool. Yeah, like, if that's what you guys are like, you know, if that's what makes you happy and all that, that's cool, but make sure you're getting tested, make sure we're using protection and things like that. And I felt bad because I felt they were judging him based on his sexuality or his sexual experience, and I

didn't think that that was very fear. I was super open minded, Like I even said to him, if you want to have relationships with men, then please tell me, because that is something I cannot fulfill. And we talked about that all the time, and he was like, nah, like I really don't have that feeling. I feel like you're my person and we're good, like just us two, you know, which is like exactly what I wanted to hear.

friends once the relationship progressed. There's no particular reason why. It just kind of happened. People stopped reaching out to us to hang out. But I think because we knew so many people and our involvement in the gay community, it kind of felt like like that wasn't us anymore. Because he was like straight. He never came out as anything else. He never used words to describe himself or

his sexuality. He just said like i'm me, I'm me, and that We would say that to each other often, like this is just us, and you know, there's not really one word that can describe it. We were just Lauren and Jason. That was it. The relationship was really easy. It was very relaxing for me. I didn't really have too much to worry about. Jason was a really good partner. He was the most amazing listener, and he just understood me so well. He offered so much more than what

our friendship really started with. And that was just like his devotion, his love, his affection. Like the way he spoke to me was like I was the only person in the whole world. And that's how he always treated me. Whether he was at work or he was at home, it was always about me. I was so in love with him and so obsessed with him and the way that he provided for me, and like I never had to worry about a single thing ever because he just

like had it all sorted. He had it all organized, Like he kept a calendar on the wall and he would book my dentist appointments for me and like give me the money to pay for like whatever I needed. It was just like a very stress free relationship, and I think that's why I just enjoyed it and I lapped it up to you know. I would be like, hey, so I heard that, you know, Beyonce's coming to Sydney, Like do you want to go? And he would be like, well, I don't really like her, but we can go so

so he would buy me tickets like it. That's just the kind of person he was. He wanted me to be happy all the time. Our relationship maintained that like sexual dynamic, and you know, ramped up the chemistry there for a good I want to say, six months, and then Jason started talking about having a baby again, having a family, and it was like his biggest dream in life was to be a dad, and that's all he

ever wanted. He had names for like his kids, and you know, we shared that that stuff with each other. It was pretty like normal for friends. And then you know, boyfriend girlfriend kind of chat. And he started saying to me, like, when do you want to have a kid? Is it something that's on the cards for us soon? And that felt like the next step as well. But at the same time, I was twenty five turning twenty six, I still didn't really have that big pool to be a mom.

I felt like I wanted to continue having fun. I wanted to continue traveling and discovering this romantic side of us and exploring that a little bit more rather than getting a bit too serious. So I entertained his conversations about having kids. And that was because I never wanted to disappoint him. I always wanted to talk about the things he wanted to talk about. I knew I wanted to have kids one day, but my timeline wasn't matching up with his. And I didn't want to tell him

that because I didn't want to put him off. I didn't want him to have a reason to not like me. I wanted to make him happy. But no matter what I said, that was the topic of conversation every day he was at work. Baby chat. Yeah. And then he came home from work one day and he asked me, when did I last get my period? I said to him, oh,

I think maybe like a week ago. And he was like perfect, and he picked up his phone and he put it in his phone and I was like, wait, what are you doing And he's like, oh, nothing, I'm just just curious. So that's when it kind of began. The baby planning started. He ramped it up. He ramped up the baby chat. He wanted to talk about my mental cycle, he wanted to talk about my diet, he wanted to talk about, like, you know, how many drinks I'm having a week, And started asking all of this stuff,

and he was very open with it. He said, you know, we need to prepare. You told me one year. I may have said that in a conversation, but in my heart, I wasn't feeling like I could have a baby in a year. I knew that deep down. So for about four weeks when he was home, it was preparing us

to get pregnant. You know, I would talk about how he's much older than me and he doesn't want to be an old dad, and it would be a great situation for us because I'm young, I'm fertile, I've got lots of eggs and I could free some if I want to. And it was just everything. It was the IVF chat. It was going off medication and even for himself, like what vitamins he should take. Yeah, it became super

serious and very quickly sex was about conceiving. So we had been sleeping together for about eight months when the sex started to be about how kids, and it was every time he was home. The sex was not passionate. It became about having a baby. He didn't know, but I was taking the pill this whole time because I wanted to have some sort of control and I wanted to have a say, and you know my decision. But my heart just loved him so much. I didn't want

to let him down. And I just thought, if I just like hold off, like you know, so many women don't have babies right away, So if I can just hold off until, like I'm ready, then I'll go off the pill. But because he was so up in my business and every aspect of my life, I would get my sheets of contraception pill and I would pop them all out and put them in my vitamin jar so that he did know. He would never check like my

vitamin C jar, you know. And so that's how I took my pill every day when he was home.

It's my uterus. You know. He can't just have a baby whenever he wants. It doesn't work that way, right, So I kept taking my pill, and every day when I would take my pill, I would like say to myself, like, yes, that's up to you, Like this is your choice, nobody else's, And he was just had no idea. Yeah, so I would say we were actively trying quote unquote to get pregnant for about three months. He thought that it would happen really fast because I was young, fit, healthy, young lady.

He thought I would get pregnant pretty quickly, and of course it didn't. One day, when he was at work, I received an email and it came from a lawyer, but it wasn't written by the lawyer. The letter was written by Jason. And I don't know if it was real or if it was fake, but the contract basically listed a few terms and conditions to being his baby mama. Dear Lauren Police. He attached a contract for future children

with Jason. I had a quick flick through it and I just like, I just burst into tears because I thought that he was my best friend. We were in love, we were like talking about our future. We were potentially going to have a family one day. And reading this email just was like a stab in the heart because the conditions that were listed in this document were disgusting, like just something that you would like never ever want

to give the mother of your children. The first one was that I had to return back to my previous weight within three months of giving birth. That I would have to cover fifty to fifty percent of the expenses when it came to having a child, that I was not to have a c section, I had to give birth naturally because according to his research, a vaginal birth is better for the babies microbiom. That he would be

naming the children, he would choose the names. I don't think at the time I even finished reading the document. It just made me sick because never ever in my life had I seen this side of him before. It broke me because here I was thinking I had a bit of control around when I was going to conceive another life, and here's him sending me all these terms and conditions, thinking that he owned me and that I

would oblige. I immediately picked up my phone and tried to call him because I thought it was a prank. I thought, like, there's no way he would the depth that we went through talking about our future kids, none of that ever came up. And that's why I was so shocked, Like I just gonn't believe it. And when I picked up the phone and tried to call him, of course he didn't answer. He knew what was calling. I just waited, waited to hear from him, wait to

see what kind of explanation he could possibly have. When we did get in touch, it was probably the next day. I asked him pretty straight up. I just said, was all of this just to have a kid that you can keep as your own? Like, because I felt like, well, where do I fit into the picture when the baby comes, Like I can't name my own child or have an input into the name. Like I asked him, did you do this just to have a baby with me? And now, of course he said, no, no, no, it's not like

that at all. I'm just trying to protect myself. I had this deep feeling that Jason had planned this to have a child to fulfill his dream of having a child. At this same time, I was trying to convince myself that that wasn't true because of the relationship that we built, because of the memories that we had, like the traveling and staying up all night talking about like our dreams and talking about traveling with our kids and all of that. I just couldn't believe that he had manipulated me into

having a baby. Although I think that that was the case. Straight away was like, nah, I'm not doing it no way, because I had seen from family members, you know, who had had kids young, and the tumultuous relationships that they had had with their their kids' fathers, and I just thought to myself, I have to pick my kid's father. It has to be the most important decision I'm ever

going to make. Because I thought that this man loved me and adored me more than anyone else in the world, and he still looked at me like that, like that I belonged to him, That he could tell me what to do with my body, that he could tell me that I had no choice or control around my own kids, And yeah, I knew that I had to get out. Then once I received the contract, I realized in that moment that my life was never going to be the same again. I immediately had an emotional change, and it

was something I couldn't really help. You know, as women, we tend to check out emotionally before we do physically. And I felt that, and over the course of about two months that Paul just felt stronger and stronger. The more I thought about getting married, having kids, being with a husband who wants to adore me in motherhood and enjoy the natural process of, you know, having a family, I felt that that wasn't going to happen with Jason.

After the contract, I wanted to kind of maintain what we had and put that behind us, because there was so much good in what we had, and I wanted to believe that that was a mistake he made. So I kind of continued to put in the effort that I had done before, you know, keeping up the communication when he was away for work and talking about kids, talking about the future. I was so afraid of losing

him that I wanted to keep him interested. But when he went back to work, like the messages stopped coming, he stopped replying, or he left me unseen a lot, and he stopped calling as well, And like I knew, I knew that it wasn't going to be the same as it was. But every day I would message him like hey, babe, how's your day going, And I miss you. I can't wait to your home again, and he'd say, hey, thanks, yeah, I'm tired, talk tomorrow. And that just was not the

Jason that I knew and loved. When he got home after that swing at work, it was the same. It was, you know, he didn't want to talk, he didn't want to hang out, he didn't want to do the things that we enjoyed. I found that he was, you know, going to the gym by himself, when we always did that together. We always cooked together, like all of our meals like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When he was home, we cooked together. The first day he came home, I woke up in the morning and he had just eaten

his breakfast and left. And that was like, yeah, it really broke my heart because I knew he was trying to send a message, almost like almost trying to prepare me for the breakup. I ended up going to my mom's. I packed a bag and I went to my mom's and I just said, I need to have a breather and can't stay with mum. And I, oh, chat to

you soon, and he just said, yeap, okay. So I spent about a month at my mom's and during that time I told her everything about how it began and how it progressed into what it was, and telling her all about, you know, the baby making and how he just became so obsessed with wanting to have a baby. And my mom, she's a dag. She just said to me, girl, if you don't get up out of that house right now, you are going to be stuck with that man for the rest of your life telling you how to raise

your baby. And I knew she was right. I knew she was right. I just needed a little bit more time to process it. And I kind of like wanted him to come and sweep me off my feet, Like I wanted him to just rock up to mums and just say, oh, like I'm sorry, let's just like start over. And I would have jumped in his arms right then and there. He never came. He would message me like every few days and say like when you're coming home, and so yeah, maybe maybe this week, maybe next week.

But he never wanted to resolve anything or you know, he never wanted to say sorry. I wanted him to say sorry so bad, so that we could just start over. I started to kind of map out how I would leave and where I would go and what I would say to him so that it wasn't a big fight it was. I wanted it to be smooth, so that I wasn't hurting him. I never wanted to hurt him, and I knew that once I did leave, it wouldn't

be easy. I knew that it would take a long time for us to detach from me each other because we were in each other's pocket twenty four seven. So I eventually went home to collect my things, and I didn't want to go alone because I didn't want to backpedal on all the work that I had done with my mom and my family, my sister. So I knew I had to go there with somebody. So I asked my brother to come with me. And he liked Jason, they were friends, but he didn't care. He wanted me

to get out of there. So yeah, he took me home and I just went into the house and I started picking up my things, and a lot of the things were his because he took care of everything. He paid for everything, he bought everything. So when I was packing up my things. I looked around and I realized, like, there's like hardly any of me here, you know, like a few eggs and clothes and like here straightener and

a few bits and bobs like that. But other than that, it's really like his life and I was just living in it. I said to him, like, okay, I'm picking up my things and I'm going to move in with my mum, and he just gave me a big hug and we had a little cry together.

than anything. It was more the friendship that I lost that I was so so sad about. Like every time my phone would light up, I would think, ah'ser him, because we like messaged each other all day and I missed that, Like my phone stopped going flat because I wasn't getting any messages or any calls. And because he was my whole world. I didn't really have many friends outside of our relationship, so I didn't even really have

anyone to talk about it with. I didn't really want to get to know somebody else and do all that again to one day maybe have kids. I thought that we were in the right spot to like kind of getting there, and it was even though our timings were not in line, I did think, yeah, maybe one more year, and like, yeah, I'd love to have a baby. Yeah. So I was really scared. I was really scared about

leaving and starting over and meeting someone else. Even though I was young at the time, I just didn't feel young. It was a big chunk of my life, and he was really all I knew. I had had very short term relationships, but other than that, I didn't know anything else other than Jason. He taught me. Everything that I knew about friendship, relationship, sex, like it all started with him, and I was petrified of ever doing any of that with anybody else. When I first moved to Sydney, I

didn't really know anyone or anything. I was so young, and he took me in and cared for me. He protected me. He was so much and he taught me so much as well. He really did. I felt like he was a gentleman. I felt that he treated me good, he adored me. He would tell me I was beautiful and that he was the only person that could take care of me, and I believed every single word he said. I ate it up. Yeah, I felt like a million bucks when we were together. Yeah, that's how he made

me feel. For about a month to eight weeks, I was depressed, grieving. I missed him so much. He was all I thought about, and I just really hoped that he was happy, Like I really hoped that he would be able to like find the courage to come out, like find a partner and have a baby with his partner, because I think deep down that's what he really wanted. I felt that his shame of his sexuality was kind of tainting his dream, you know, his true dream, which was to have a male partner and have a family

with him. Yeah. I just felt I was doing the right thing by going no contact and just leaving and letting him do his thing, and maybe he felt the same way about me as well. But about three months after I moved out, I received a message on Instagram and it was from a girl, and the message just said, Hey, Lauren, can I ask you a question? Is Jason gay? And my heart sank. I felt like I was going to vomit because I thought, oh, my gosh, why would somebody

say that? Because we didn't use labels, we didn't use words like that to describe each other. I didn't respond to the message because I was just too protective of him and it wasn't my place to tell anyone about his private life. But I did find out from a few of our mutual friends that he was dating her and they had actually met at work while we were together.

I felt like receiving that information it was like, great, close that book, and now we are Because there was always a little part of me that if he said jump, I would have said how high even after I left, But getting that information was like that was closure for me, I could move on. By this stage, I had already done a little bit of you know, deep work and was working on myself. And you know, if I had received that message the day after I walked out of

their house, I think I would have collapsed. But at the time, I really just like felt like, not my monkey, not my circuit, you know, like my time is done. I've done ten years with this man. I gave him everything, literally, like I gave him my body and soul, and now it's like up to him to deal with his own demons. I didn't hate him, and sometimes I felt like I wish I did, so that you know, I could have a little bit of like anger, to be like, oh

this freaking lose ale whatever. But there were too many good things about him. Yeah, so that closed it off for me.

so I decided to take her for a walk. And so we jumped on the train and we're just cruising down George Street and I hear my name being called out from across the street Lauren, and I knew immediately hill was my stomach sank. I thought I was going to ship my pants because I just thought I knew the day was going to come one day, like we lived in the same city. But I was really surprised he come running across the road Lauren, how ai ya?

I said, hey, I'm really good and he just looked down at the pram and looked up at me and he was like, this is I said, yeah, this is my daughter, and he was just like he just gave me the biggest hug and he was like, oh, my goodness, she is so beautiful. Congratulations, I'm so happy for you.

And I had my hands like on the pram like this, and he looked down at my hand and he saw my wedding ring, and he was just like he just looked at me and he just said, I'm so happy that you're happy, and I wish you nothing but the best. And I just looked at him and I was like, thank you so much. I didn't have have it in me to ask him how he was or where he was at in his life. I almost didn't want to know. And I just said, thanks so much, lovely to see you look good. And that was I said, I've got

to get going. He's like, yeah, no worries, you know, I have a good day. And that was it. And that was four years ago, and yeah, it was It was a super like healing moment for me, just to see that he was well and he looked happy, like he looked like his usual self. I have a couple of mutual friends like that we're still friends with on Facebook. But I don't think that Jason is involved much in

the LGBTQ plus community anymore. Yeah, just because I haven't seen like anything of him anywhere, you know, with my friends who are still quite active in the social communities. I've always like hoped and wished that he would live his authentic life out, you know, because I knew that side of him for four years, you know, where he was like actively dating other men. And yeah, I always thought that as he got a bit older and matured a bit and was less ashamed, that he would finally

come out. But yeah, I don't think he has. Jason would be in his fifties now, and I would hope that he's wise enough now to just be his authentic self. And I would hope that even if he doesn't want to come out and have a relationship with a man, that he feels that he can still have kids on his own, he doesn't need somebody else to do it

with him. I don't miss him now. I'm just really lucky to be in the position that I am now because I and I know that, you know, finding the right person and being married and having kids with a guy who just absolutely adawes you and your kids, you know, it doesn't always happen that way. So I know that and I appreciate that, and I feel like if it weren't for Jason and myself and our experience, I would have never met my husband and have the family that

we have today. I always imagine that being the mother of Jason's kids would be like walking on eggshells and would be like, you know, getting permission for every single thing. I mean, if you can't name your own kids, then what else could you possibly do as well? And I felt that that's the kind of arrangement he wanted when seeking out the mother of his kids, or if he felt like that would be me. Like he did tell me that I would be an amazing minad and that

I would be the best mum for his kids. And it was because I did everything that he wanted, you know, I said yes to everything that he wanted and I was available to him. Twenty four seven, I look back and I think I think Jason picked me, Like from that very first night that we met at the party.

I think he saw me at that party and he saw how young I was, how vulnerable I was, and how kind I was to him, and how drawn I was to him as well, you know, like I said, we clicked immediately and I went along with everything that he presented to me as a friend. Yeah, so I felt that he picked me. But looking back, I really don't think that I would change my experience. I guess now that I am a mom, I do realize that it is a really special and sacred time and sharing

my kids with my husband is just amazing. And I always knew that I would have kids when it felt right, and so now that I have that, being a mom and experiencing motherhood is literally just the most amazing thing I think I've ever done and I ever will do. I always thought that the love that I had for Jason was, you know, beyond this earth, but truly being a mom and having kids and experienceing them is so much more, so much more than anything that you'd ever

experience with a partner. I truly believe that.

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