You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters. This podcast is recorded on. This episode deals with domestic violence, pregnancy termination, and talk of suicide. Listener discretion is advised. What would you do, dear listener, if you found out something about your partner that changed the very fabric of your relationship at a point when you felt you were too far in would you cut and run or would you trust the fact you've now found out and try to move on.
He knew that I wouldn't have continued with the relationship if you told me so. He didn't, and then he decided to buy a house with me and start this whole life with me without being honest about this very crucial part that I deserve to know.
So maybe you do keep moving forward. Maybe you move forward for six years, but through and after it all, it turns out what you thought what was the issue didn't even scratch the surface.
At that moment when he had opened up about that, it was just like all the pieces just fit. It was like that missing puzzle piece that I was trying to search for for so many years, and I found it, you know, the penny dropped. It wasn't just his depression, it wasn't just all these other things. There was no hope anymore.
I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an ex Come with me as we dive into a collection of unconventional stories about relationships past through the eyes and the hearts of the very people who lived them. We're so often hear that when you're not looking, that's when you find the right person. But sometimes, like for Rebecca and Cam, it's not even you who finds the person, but someone else, a trusted friend with only good intentions.
We met in January of twenty seventeen. We were set up by a mutual friend and at the time I was twenty almost twenty one and he was twenty three. I wasn't really looking for anything serious, sort of just popped up. My friend thought that we would be well suited together, and you know, why not give it a crack. So I thought, you know, what have I got to lose? So we organized a date. It all happened pretty quickly. It was within the week. We went on a date.
We went to the beach, got a coffee, and we sort of just sat on the beach talking for a couple of hours, and like it was good. First time I saw him, I thought he was cute, you know, I was like, this is good. We hit it off straight away. Really, we just vibed. He had a good energy about him, and I was attracted to him. You know. He was wearing a hat and he always seemed to wear hats, and he had one of those beaber fringes, and he was tall. He had a really nice smile,
you know, like it was really nice. It was very inviting. We had a lot of similarities, like he had had a serious motorbike accident when he was fourteen, and I had the same one when I was eighteen, and we both experienced the same brain injury, which I'm fine now, by the way, but that was something that we could relate to, and that was something that really sort of connected us right from the beginning, because not many people in this world know what it's like to have a
well temporary brain injury. No one really knows what that feeling's like. But he did, you know, we did. So we just bonded over that and we just laughed and he was funny and he was nice, and he just seemed to be on my level, and I just really like that. And I think because we were set up through a mutual friend as well, there's that connection there, so it's sort of just like that instant you can just you can trust them. I wasn't actually going to
go on a second date. Towards the end of the date, he was talking about his ex a lot, and that's sort of like a turn off to me. I'm just like, I'm not really interested in talking about exes. It's not really something you talk about on a first day. But I sort of went home and I spoke to my sister and she's like, just give it another go, because
he was really keen to see me again. And I was just like, oh yeah, but he spoke about his ex and you know, and she's like, just give it a go, just give it another girl, and I was like okay. So it was like two days later and we met up again. I actually went to his house, which is not something that I'd usually do, but just felt comfortable and easy to do, so so I did and we hung out at his and honestly, the rest was history. We just we would see each other like
almost every single day. We lived basically an hour apart from each other, but we'd always make the drive, like after work or we just had this routine. It all just happened so quickly, and we were just like two peas in a pod. We spend a lot of time at each other's houses. He lived close to the water, so we'd always drive to the beach, have a coffee. We'd go on hikes. I love deer, so we'd always try and find the deer. We just spend a lot of time near the water, and we spoke a lot.
We had good communication, so we just spent most of our time talking and it was just strengthening the connection. I felt very early on that that I was falling in love with him, and I felt that that was reciprocated. And three months in I said that I loved him and he set it back, and then it just it shot off.
The relationship picked up thick and fast from there. Quickly they knew they wanted to live together, so they put their financial maturity caps on, saved hard, and after Josh I have eighteen months together, they bought a house.
It was amazing. It was like living with your best friend. Honestly, it was like a constant sleepover with your best friend every single day. I was so happy. We would both work full time and he would leave for work earlier than me, and he would always leave a coffee in a coffee cup for me with a little note next to the kettle, always like a cute note that was always really nice. So I'd always have something nice to
wake up to every morning. And so we would go to work, we'd come home and then we cooked dinner together. We'd sit out the back. We loved having cups of teas, so we just sit out at the back and we just talk. We just talk about everything, honestly, like we could talk to the cows. Came home like it was just we're so close and so that's what our afternoon,
our evening would look like. It was one of those relationships where it's just it's perfect, you know, like even people at work they're talking about their relationships, or he does this that's annoying or whatever. I never had anything bad to say. It was just we were so close and connected and every day was just absolutely amazing. It was just one of those relationships where like nothing could go wrong, you know, like everything's just perfect. And there
was a lot of faith in the relationship. A lot of trust in the relationship and it was just it was amazing. So those first six months were just everything.
Uh oh, what happened? After six months?
There was one night that we were sitting in the back room. He started just having this panic attack next to me, and I was looked at him. I was like, like, what's going on? And he was like, I can't hide this any longer. I need to tell you. And he told me that he had cheated on me seven months into a relationship with a girl that he used to speak to, and you know, he was he started to go into detail, but I stopped him in his tracks. I'm like, I don't I don't want to know, I
don't care to know. And I just sort of just jumped up, grabbed my keys, and walked out to my car and he was it was like a whole dramatic scene where he was chasing me out and he was like, please don't leave. I love you. You know I made a mistake. And I was like, I'm not hearing it. I don't care to hear about it. And I got in my car and I took off and I drove like twenty minutes and I just sat in my car for hours, just trying to process everything. I was shocked,
and I was angry. I was I was shocked, and I was angry because why would you commit to buying a house with me and starting this life with me and you couldn't be honest about what had happened because he knew. He knew. I'd always said it right from the beginning, like the one thing you don't do is cheat on me, Like he knew that I would have
continued with the relationship if he told me so. He didn't, and then he decided to buy a house with me and start this whole life with me without being honest about this very crucial part that I deserve to know. I just couldn't get my head around what he told me and how I was supposed to move forward that because I've always been so you know, if someone cheats on you, like that's it. I just don't have time
for that stuff. And you know, I've been with like in past relationships where they've been unfaithful, and I felt like I'd learned a lot from those times and sort of like if something like that came up again, I wouldn't put up with that again. Here I was bought a house with this guy and he's just told me this exact thing. I think it was eating him up inside. I mean, we spoke about everything. I was so surprised that he kept this so so quiet. You know, we
spoke about everything. We had great communication, and I think just how close we were. I think it was just eating him up inside. The gilt was getting to him. And I don't know why he decided to tell me that point, but he did so. After a couple of hours, I drove back to the house. He was waiting at the door. When I got home, I didn't speak to him. I just straightway went to bed. We didn't speak it all that night, made him sleep on the lounge that night,
and that next morning we spoke about it briefly. I was still pretty hurt at that time, but basically he just kept telling me that he loved me and that he made a mistake. And you know that the reason that he told me was because he just couldn't keep it in any longer and felt like I had a
right to know, so so he told me. I think it took me a couple of days just to sort of get my head around it and work out what I wanted to do going forward, because, like I mean, if we hadn't bought a house together, I wouldn't ditched it and run at that moment. But I felt like, you know, I'd moved an hour away from from my home, I'd gotten this new job, we bought a house. You know, We've got three beautiful dogs, and we started this life together.
And it's not as easy as just leaving. So it was after a couple of days, he was sitting up in the garage just on a camping chair, just having a beer, and I sort of I pulled up a chair next to him. And this was the first time I'd sort of been really open to properly talking about it, and I sort of took the focus away from me, and I wanted to know how he felt. I wanted to know what it was like for him to keep
that secret from me. I basically said that, listen, we've got this house together, we've got this whole life together. Who we were at seven months is completely different to who we are now. Just as long as going forward we're always open and we're honest, I can move past this. So we agreed that we moved past it, and that was it. You know, like it's still hurt, but I have a good ability to sort of let these things go, sort of heal, and I felt like I could move on,
and I did. I felt that I still loved him the same, But it did, it did change things, at least in the interim. For me. I couldn't get it out of my head, just the thought of him being with somebody else, and especially when it had happened. He literally saw me that next day and I'd slept with him that next day, you know, and that just it
makes me feel sick to think of those things. But I did feel that we were strong enough to be able to get through it, and I felt within myself, I felt that I was strong enough, and I felt like I'd made peace with it, you know, and we were good. It felt like we were sort of on track again, and he was loving on me and he was everything. And then he just changed. Something changed. He
became distant. He started to become distant from me. I was not sure what was going on, because I mean, he's been pleading and telling me how much he loved me and how much a mistake he made and everything like that, and I wasn't sure why he pulled back so much, and then he just basically told me that he was struggling with the guilt of it all, and basically that he loved me, but he wasn't in love
with me, and that completely destroyed me. I was like, so, I'm like bending over backwards trying to get over this thing, and what have I got to hang on to now? Like? What have I got to? I mean, you're not even in love with me anymore. Like it was just it was so brutal. And then he told me that he wasn't attracted to me and that he never really was. He just fell in love with my heart. That was horrendous. I mean, I feel like everything inside me just changed.
My appearance in the mirror. Everything when I'd stand in front the mirror, it wasn't even me looking back anymore. I couldn't everything changed about me. I just I mean, you can be told by many people that you know you're attractive or whatever, but then that person that you're in love with, if he tells you that you're not, you believe it. So I did. That was so brutal. That was that desdrove me. I was obviously extremely hurt. I cried, I cried a lot, but I was also
so confused. I couldn't understand where this was coming from. I mean, a week earlier, he was pleading with me to saying that how much he loved me and how much he regretted everything. In a couple of days, we were going away with his family. So we had decided that he was going to go on that family trip and I was going to stay home because he wasn't sure if he wanted to be with me anymore. This all happened within a week, So he went away with his family. I stayed home, and that was really hard.
We didn't have any communication in that time, and the whole time I was just roodled with anxiety. I was like, you know, what's it going to be like when he gets back? Will he want to be with me? Will he will he want to leave me? Like? Where do I stand with this? He got back from his trip and basically he said that you know that he feels
that he wants to work on things. And I was relieved, still very confused, but I think it's just been such a whirlwind of a week, you know, from being told that I've been cheated on and I just bought this house and all this stuff had been a lie to he's no longer in love with me, nor is he attracted to me to that now he wants to work on things, and I was relieved, and I was like, Okay, we can do this, you know, like maybe it was
just the guilt of everything. Maybe it was just the fact that he'd been holding this big secret from me for so long, and we were so close. You know, we're best friends, and we've been best friends for two years, you know, like it was just I sort of was like, okay, I can kind of understand this. Okay, okay, like let's
reset and let's try this again. I just wanted him to love me, and I think being cheated on and having that ripped away from me, having the relationship ripped away from me so quickly, and then being told that, instead of feeling like, you know, screw you, it felt like I just I just wanted him to love me, and I just didn't know why he didn't love me, and we'd been so close for so long, so I just almost felt desperate for him to love me. So I didn't look at it as in, you'd hurt me,
you'd done this to me, like how dare you. I'm just I'm out of here sort of thing. Like, I just I was so focused on just getting us back, getting us back on track, and getting us back to where we were, because everything had just blown up in a second, you know, like it was just I did not see it coming.
The relationship inevitably changed. While they acted on the surface like everything was okay, behind closed doors, it wasn't.
We'd always had great intimacy, we were always very bonded in that way, very connected in that way. It was. It was great. There was never any sign there were never any signs that anything was wrong in that department at all. But the moment that he told me that he cheated on me, that's when its apart. We stopped being intimate. When he told me that he wasn't in love with me and that he wasn't attracted to me,
that he never was in the first place. He'd also told me that he no longer wanted to sleep with me because he wasn't attracted to me, and so that fizzled very quickly. He started drinking copious amounts of alcohol. I mean I would get home of an evening and he'd already be into the beers. Sometimes it was a case of beer a night. He would tell me that it was from the guilt of everything that he'd done, that he just felt so bad about it and so bad about himself for what he'd done to me and
everything like that. So it would almost make me feel guilty for well feeling bad about him cheating on me. So I just stopped. I felt like I had to move on because every time I couldn't, I couldn't draw attention to it, because every time that I would, he would just withdraw from me, because that's how he got when he drank. He would be arrogant, he'd be cold,
he'd be mean, he'd be distant and on sianta. I just I just wanted him to love me again, and I just I wasn't able to speak about the cheating because he would just he pull away from me, and
I didn't want that, so I just didn't. I kept it to myself, and I just thought that, you know, if we didn't bring it up and we just continued on as as normal, then then maybe everything would just balance back out and he would just because he hadn't he hadn't been drinking throughout the whole relationship, not like he was now, and he was just this completely different person. I look back now and I think, why wouldn't I have left? Why would I have not have just packed
my bags and left? But at that time, I wanted us to get back on track because we've been best friends for two years, you know, and we'd have we had a house together, we had a whole life together, and obviously I was I was confused as to what was going on because we'd been so close for so long.
So it was sort of like I knew that something was going on with him and that it was something more than what he was telling me, and I just I just needed to work it out, and I needed to to get us back to where we were because we were so good. So when he came back from his family getaway and he told me that he wanted to work on things, I was relieved and I was happy, and I was ready to resat with him and move forward.
So once he told me that, I was kind of like, Okay, so it's something more than me and than us, and it's sort of just like it was starting to put pieces together. I'm like, Okay, this is something that we that we can move forward with we can work out it's you know, he's struggling mentally, Okay. I wanted to help him, so, you know, we had a lot of conversations about that, and you know, I did a lot of research and you know, I went to doctor's appointments
with him. I was always there too. I was always talking about it. So when he went to the door as he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, they gave him medication for that, some antidepressants for that. And at that point he was still very distant from me. We weren't really communicating much, we weren't intimate. He was still drinking a lot at that point. But he started on the antidepressants and probably about I don't know, two or
three weeks later, things dramatically improved. It's like he did this whole one to eighty, you know, and he was back to the cam that I knew and loved. He was back to normal, and I was like, okay, so it was just depression and this medication is obviously helping, so okay, Like it just it gave me hope, you know, it gave us both hope. To be honest, it was just we were back on track. We were starting to
be intimate again, we were communicating again. He told me that he'd fallen back in love with me, and he was like, I'm so sorry for everything that happens, you know, like that wouldn't ever happen again. I don't know what happened, but it felt good and we were back on track.
Thank god. So that it's the end of the story then.
But that lasted about a week. He decided that, you know, he's feeling good. He no longer needed the medication anymore. So he decided to stop. And literally the moment he did, everything just flipped on its head again, did another complete one eighty well, right back to square one. He told me that he didn't love me again. We weren't intimate anymore. He was just going back and forth, over and over again. He did this so many times. He would go back on his medication. He would go back off as soon
as he started to feel good again. He felt like he was strong enough to stop. And honestly, this probably happened about ten fifteen times, honestly, just back and forth, and in that time, I was just losing my mind. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to help this guy. Initially, when he would go off the medication, I would just be looking forward to the next time that he got on that medication, because I just knew that when he would be on the medication,
on the antidepressants, that he would come back. But as time went on and the more times he did it, he just he stopped coming back. He was just sort of just still wasn't in love with me, still didn't like me, still didn't want to be with me. He would become very mean. He'd say very mean things to me. That's a lot of the time when he would talk about the fact that he wasn't attracted to me, he would be basically yelling in my face that he didn't want to be with me. A lot of the time,
when he would drink, he would threaten suicide. He would tell me how unhappy he was, how unhappy I made him, how unhappy he was with his life, how he should just end it all. There were many times that he would punch holes in the wall. He was forever just fixing up holes in the wall. Even broke his knuckles
once from punching a hole in the wall. It was embarrassing to have people over because it's like, how do you explain these random holes in the walls, all these patches, you know, Like I felt like I couldn't even have my parents over because they'd noticed that stuff straight away. I just felt like every single day I didn't know what to expect. I mean, if he wasn't punching holes in the wall, he was yelling in my face, he
was hurling Esk's across the room at me. So I sort of got to the point that I switched off. I still remember the moment that I felt all my emotions to switch off, like it'd been complete It'd been complete turmoil every single day because he was just in this constant cycle and he would be drinking so much, and every single day you just never knew what was going to happen. I just became a shell of a human. It's hard to even think what I was actually like
at that time. I was just existing, really just making it through the next day and just hoping that, you know, tomorrow will be a better day. And sometimes it was, and other times it wasn't far.
From Rebecca knew this wasn't the life she wanted, but she didn't know how to get out.
I felt like I couldn't leave. Initially, it was you know that we can work on this and we can move forward, and you know, there was hope for us. But it got to the point that he'd just beaten me down so much. My self confidence was so low, I had gained so much weight. I felt horrible about myself. I just felt completely stuck in this cycle. And I felt like I was too weak. I couldn't I couldn't leave, and it just felt like even just the thought of leaving.
I mean, of course I thought about it as anyone would, but the process of leaving just seemed way too hot. I was the shell of a human and I just I just put up with it. I just I just stayed. I stopped hoping that he would come back, and I just dealt with whatever came my way every single day, whether it was violent, whether it was verbal abuse, every like. I just I just never really knew what to expect. But I just ended up just dealing with it. And
that was just my life. When we would get into our fights when he was drinking, he would become handsy with me. He never hit me, but he would become pushy, you know, shove me out of the way. There was one night where I was in the bedroom and he came up behind me and he wanted to have sex. I obviously did not want to. We just had a fight and he pushed me on the bed and tried
to have his way with me. Was not successful. I was only twenty three, and I was thinking, this is my life, this is what my life looks like now, and I couldn't see a way out. I couldn't see that light at the end of the tunnel. I was just constantly caught in a spiral of course rap every single day, and this was just my life now. And no one really knew the extent of everything that was happening at home, because I feel like if I had told, say, my family, then for one, I was still trying to
protect him. People knew that some things were going down, but I wasn't completely honest about everything that was going down because I I was protecting him, and honestly, I just couldn't. I couldn't deal with any added stress or pressure. So I just I kept myself. I shut off from the world and just dealt with the drunken cam every single night, and whatever happened just happened. It was his
Dad's birthday and he gone out drinking. I stayed home because I just didn't feel like going out hadn't been the best time for me. He got home and I was out the back having a tea and a smoke, and he came out and he was drunk, and straight away I was just like, I'm not dealing with this, and so I went to bed, and probably a couple
hours later, he came to bed as well. He'd been so drunk that night that the next morning his alarm was going off at quarter to six, and he always had his alarm set and I'd always be like nudging him to wake up and turn it off, because he always sucked at waking up to his alarm, But because he'd been so drunk that night before, he just didn't respond to me nudging him. So I grabbed the phone and turned off his alarm. And when I turned off his alarm, his whole entire screen was just full of
Tinder notifications. I'm not much of a snoop. I have never been much of a snoop. But I looked, I absolutely did, and I saw absolutely everything that he'd been saying. I looked at every single message, and I realized that this had been going on for basically the whole relationship, the whole entire time he'd been doing this, My stomach
absolutely dropped. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach to read everything that I was reading, to see the photos that he was sending, to see the videos that he was sending to and not just to one person, to multiple people. I just I felt absolutely sick to my stomach, like, who is this person? Who is this person that I'm living with? I just it was absolutely disgusting, And I mean, it makes sense as to why he was no longer intimate with me anymore, right, he was getting his fixed elsewhere.
But it was really hard to see that there were lots of photos of him sending his penis to random people, videos of him doing that exact thing. I was also could see videos of girls sending him things even if they didn't respond, sort of thing. If some people didn't respond, like he was just on it, like he was just like, you know, you're so hot, you're beautiful, like I want to get to know you, all this stuff, and if they didn't respond, like he was just one after the other,
just sending more and more messages. And I was just like, this is absolutely revolting. I was angry, I was hurt, but I was just also just disgusted because who is this person. I went to the gym twice that morning, just trying to clear my head once again, like okay, so now this is an added thing to this whole thing, is the fact that he's being completely unfaithful and god knows what else. And I got back around quarter to twelve and he was still in bed at that time.
When he got up, I asked to see his phone. He was a bit appressive about that to begin with, but I demanded to see his phone. And when I looked to his phone again that whole time, that whole morning, he had been talking to more people. He did not stop. He did not stop. I was absolutely furious. I dropped his phone to the ground and I stumped on it and I smashed his screen, and I was just just
out of my mind. I just couldn't believe everything. From going from such a strong close relationship where everything was perfect, everything blowing up and he's now a drunk and he's violent, and he's cheating on me every single day, and he is just saying horrendous things to me. He is beating me down every single day, and just to see that he'd been speaking to all of these girls on top of it. But I was just I was absolutely furious.
Cam apologized and promised he'd never do it again. He gave Rebecca his passwords and said she could check his phone whenever she wanted, and she did, and guess what she found.
It was just the same thing every single day. As I said, I wasn't ever much of a snoop, but I had to be or he would just constantly try and pull the wool over my eyes. But it got to the point but I would find something every single time. It got to the point that I just stopped looking because what's the point. You know, I knew what he was up to. But at that point I was still so beaten down and broken over over everything, more so so my self confidence, my self confidence. I mean I
gained thirty kilos at that point. I was no longer myself. But I had started pondering leaving at that point, because you kind of get to a point and you're just like what am I doing? Like where is this going?
Like I can't keep living like this? And I mean it'd been years, been years of this, Like, I knew what I had to do, but trying to find that strength to actually do it was a completely different ballgame, especially when you're so beaten down and you just don't have that energy and you just feel horrible about yourself
every day. It's just it's too hard, you know. But by that stage, I was thinking of what I needed to do next, and I was sort of just pondering, pondering where I would go, what I would do.
So at one point Rebecca took matters of self confidence, of wanting and the desire to be seen and respected into her own hands.
In that time, I'd started going to the gym, and I was feeling a bit better about myself, and with everything that he was doing, all the cheating, all the constant crap he was doing, I started to look elsewhere as well. One night, an old flame reached out to me and I ended up just leaving in the middle of the night and met up with this person and we were intimate, And that was the one time I'd done anything like that. I wanted to feel attention, I
wanted to feel wanted, and I did. I think that was sort of like the first time that i'd sort of really opened up to maybe going elsewhere, and I did feel wanted at that point, and it felt nice, and not only that I got to talk about everything that was going on as well, and it was just it was what I needed at that point. I think that was one of definitely the bigger turning points where I realized that I am more than more than what I thought that I was, and that there needs to
be a change. When I got home, he woke up as I was coming back to bed and he was like, what did you do? And to be honest, I was upfront about it straight away because I kind of also wanted to hurt him as well after everything that he'd done. I wanted to stick it to him in that way, and I was upfront about it, and I just said that, you know, I went for a drive with an old flame and we had sex, and I was kind of like,
it is what it is. And but if I knew what came from that, you know, the way that he blow up, the way that he would hold it against me, and the way that he would tell everyone everything like what I'd done and acting like I'm just like the villain in this, I wouldn't have gone with that approach, but I did. At that point, I was so I
was getting so over everything. I wasn't scared. I kind of felt it was honestly a little bit satisfying at that point because the amount of turmoil and the amount of hurt that I'd felt, I was kind of like, suck shit, you know, like this is what you get. It felt good that somebody else wanted me, and it felt good that I was able to tell him that somebody else did.
To be honest, Cam punished her for this verbally and emotionally almost every day in any way he could. Then it all came to a head one night when they were out with friends and things escalated to a point Rebecca never imagined.
He was sitting next to me and his phone lit up, and it was a girl that he had spoken to earlier on in the relationship, one of those ones that you just know straightaway that they're someone you know, even though he's like, no, no, it's nothing, it's nothing like, as a woman, we just know these things. She popped up and he'd been deleting her messages, and basically because he'd been drinking. As soon as I saw the message, I just looked at him, and I was like, are
you kidding me? And he just blew up and he was just like, I did nothing wrong. You know, you're just being sensitive, You're being dramatic. I did nothing wrong, blah blah blah. And I was just like I'm not doing this here, like there are people around. I'm like, I'm not doing this here, Like let's go home, And
so we decided to leave. On the way back to driving home, he was basically yelling at me and he drove to the lake and he literally drove straight into the car park and he mounted just like accelerated into the gutter of the car park. I like smacked his chest. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know if he was going to keep driving. I didn't know what was going on. But I like slammed my fist onto his chest sort of thing, and it made him like
stop the car. He got out in this like fit of rage, and he threw my keys like really far. I quickly hopped over to the driver's side and I locked the doors, and he was at the window and he was like banging on the window and he was
just like open, open the doors, Open the doors. I was like no, and he was just escalating, was escalating, and then he went to go find way through the keys and he eventually found them, and he kept unlocking the car and I kept locking the door again, and this was going back and forth, and I knew at one point that he was going to unlock it and open the door, and that last time that he did unlock it, he opened the door and I just like threw myself out of the car and like pushed him
out of the way before anything happened sort of thing. He was so angry and so like I pushed him out of the way and basically he just started yelling at me, and he was like, fuck this. I'm walking home and he just started yelling at me and he was saying, you over dramatic. Fuck I did nothing wrong. Then he was like yelling at It was like it was like one am or two am, and he was just like, you know, call the police, call your dad, tell him I beach you. But the cops aren't the
ones you're gonna need. It's gonna be the ambulance because I'm gonna go fucking neck myself. And basically he just like stormed off with the keys. So I called the family friend, and I was just in like a panic, and I was just like, you know, can you come pick me up. Cam's gone home and he's going to do something. And so the family friend came and picked me up and we drove back to the house. I got out of the car and I ran up the driveway.
I couldn't lift myself up, but I jumped up and I could see that the garage light because up the driveway was the garage, and I could see over the fence that the garage light was on, but the roller door was closed, and I signaled for my family friend to lift me up so I could jump over the fence, and he did. He helped me up, and I leapt over the fence and running up that driveway, I didn't know what I was going to find. So many things
just flashed through my mind. And I opened the roller door and he was on the ground, crying, with a noose around his neck, and he was just bawling his eyes out, and at that point I'd already called the ambulance. So the ambulance and the police arrived. They ended up taking him back to the hospital. I didn't speak to the paramedics, but I spoke with the police. They were interested to hear my side of the story as to
what's happened sort of thing and what went on. I told them everything, and they asked if I wanted to press charges, and I said no because they said that it was domestic violence, and I said no, I wasn't going to And basically they said that they put a mark against his name just in case in the future if I wanted to report anything. But that was that. Really, After that night, it changed a lot for me. I mean,
I felt so many different things. I mean, I felt more inclined to stay because I felt like I couldn't leave. I was scared of what he would do, and I last thing that I needed and wanted that point was to be responsible for something like that. But then also at the same time, I mean, I was so over it at that point, there was so like it was just I was so numb to it. But then I also cared. At the same point, I felt like I couldn't leave. Then it made me want to leave even more.
I didn't know where to go. I didn't I didn't know what to do. At that point. This rollercoaster and this numbness went on for years. This was just my life every single day. And as time progressed, we started both getting into drugs. It started with just weed every night sort of thing, and then it led onto cocaine.
But I felt like in those times we had the more real conversations when we'd be on it, so it was more of like it was a way to communicate, really a way to break through, because we just weren't communicating anymore, and when we were on those substances, we actually we actually had real conversations. And it was at that point one night we had done the drugs that we were in bed and I was just looking at him and I just I saw his whole face just change.
And at that moment, like I just felt like with everything that was going on and how how close and solid we were for so long, Like I just I'd done so much research and so much like looking into everything and just trying to work out where did this go wrong? What is happening? Why are we doing constant one eighties? Why are we always going back and forth?
And that night I just looked at him and his face completely just changed, and I just it's like I just saw it, and I was like, Camp, are you gay, and he just like he broke down and he was just like, I don't know. It was just like all the pieces just fit. It was like that missing puzzle piece that I was trying to search for for so many years, and it just I found it. You know. It all made sense as to why he'd been so unhappy and why he was drinking so much, and why
he was saying that he wasn't attracted to me. And I mean, I wish that he'd been honest about it, but I also understood as to you know, that was hard for him to say that. It was hard for him to admit that. So I was able to find that place where I was like, Okay, it's been an absolute rollercoaster, but like I hear you and I see you. I'd already given up hope with our relationship. Our relationship
was it was south. I thought maybe if he just at least hang on to a friendship, if I could at least still be me and be supportive and because I mean, that's who I am at the end of
the day, and I could empathize. You know, maybe he's just been keeping this massive secret, you know, of his sexuality, and maybe that's why everything blew up, and I could understand that, you know, and it's like, if I had to be that person that was essentially the punching bag for it, then then okay, like I made peace with it.
This is never something that I had considered before. After he told me, it was like this weight had been lifted off his shoulders, you know, like things actually improved by me being that supportive well friend at that time, things improved. His mental health seemed to improve, you know, like the drinking decreased. You know, we weren't doing the drugs anymore. He was being very open with me, very very open with me, more than I'd ever want to
know or hear or see. But I still had to take that approach of being supportive, so I didn't say anything, and I just I was thankful for the fact that he was being honest with me and open with me. So that was something that we hadn't had for a really long time. It helped me in the sense of realizing that it was never me and it was really that closure that I needed in order for me to move forward with my life and really make some real gain plan as to how I was going to move forward.
But yeah, what do you do with something like that, you know, the person that you thought was a love of your life out to be gay. After that, I really started to put things in place as to you know, searching for a house, and we were really having those conversations of me moving out or we went back and forth. He was going to move out, then I was going to move out. So we were sort of going through that whole process. But during that process a spanner was
thrown into the works. I found out that I was pregnant. I remember just when I took that pregnancy test. I remember just screaming because I was I can't deal with this right now. I can't. There was a point in our relationship earlier on where we were actually trying for a baby, which was when things were still going well and we were trying for a baby and it just wasn't happening, and I went to the doctors and it
was just there was something like unexplained infertility. You know, I'd had tests done and I just wasn't ovulating, and so there were all these things that we were trying, it just wasn't happening, and I was pregnant, and after three years it had happened and it would just had come at the complete wrong time. So the way that I told him, he got home from work and I had already sort of had my breakdown moment, freak out moment about it, and I decided I wanted to keep
the baby. I mean, I'd wanted a baby for years, So I decided to keep the baby. And when he got home from work, I had my bluetooth speaker and I played that songly you have My Baby what one of those things, and he was like just sort of like listening, and he was just like wait, what And I was like, yeah, I'm pregnant, and because at that point, like I mean, yeah, the whole sexuality thing had come out.
But I felt like, okay, like maybe we could do this and not be like together together, not in that way, like I felt like we were a lot better. And initially he was like, okay, you know, like we can do this, and he felt like okay, Like it just he gave him even more of a push to get his life back on track and everything, because you know, he was going to be a father and we were just talking about that we could do this, like not together,
but we could both be in the child's life. I mean like we could be great parents without actually being together. And that lasted I think a whole six hours. He flipped script and basically was like, you know, we can't do this, and he pushed me towards terminating the pregnancy, and I went back and forth on that many times.
I that was a really hard time. I felt like mentally I wasn't ready to do this on my own because I felt like what he was saying that basically like I would be on my own with this, and I was not strong enough to do this on my own. Weeks went by and I just went back and forth and what to do, what to do, and I decided to terminate the pregnancy, and I was absolutely just draught out of everything that had happened in the relationship. That
was the biggest thing. And it still stays with me today because I mean, for the first time, even though I felt that I wasn't ready to be a mother at that point, for the first time, I felt like I wasn't alone because everything that had been going on in the relationship, I kept it to myself, no one really knew anything, and it felt like for the first time I wasn't alone, and I would lay in bed and I'd be just like put my hand on my stomach,
just like talking. That was my baby, you know. After that, I felt there was just a massive turning point. I couldn't forgive him anymore. I was done. I was so done. I mean, this man had cheated on me, He'd been violent, he'd been a drunk, he had said horrendous things to me. I had changed so much about myself. I had just bent over backwards, and I had just put up with so much stuff, constant cheating, the constant agony, the constant roller coaster. I was thirty kilos heavier, I was losing.
I was just completely lost myself. I realized that I can't keep doing this. I'm constantly stuck in this constant cycle that I can't get out of. And like, I'm done. I can't keep doing this. I need to move on with my life. For as long as he's in my life. I can't move on. For as long as I keep doing this, I'm never gonna heal for as long as you know, I keep getting caught in this, like, like, where is my life going? So I decided to sell
my house and I moved back home. I realized just how I was just staying in this space that was just holding me back, and so that that decision to move back home, back to where I grew up was actually easy. I was just in go mode. I I just packed all my stuff, I got my house on the market, I sold my house, and I just I just left and that was it. It was hard. I think my life had been so chaotic. There'd been so much going on for so many years, like moving out
and just being in silence and just living alone. It was hard, but it was all that we knew. We knew like just each other, and we'd just been through so much together and it had just been such turmoil. He was he was battling something bigger than this, you know. I still to this day will not say that that he's a bad person. He's not tortured soul. Maybe the last time I spoke to Cam was probably about six
seven months ago. He checked in just sort of message and we had a FaceTime just a couple just to sort of like check in and see like how we're going and stuff. Because like, even though I know telling the story it sounds so bad, but there were also like he is a person and he's not a bad person. He's a tortured soul and he's just been through a lot. He ended up being diagnosed with borderline person disorder, so which made a lot of sense with all the flip
flopping around. And I honestly, after speaking to him, I mean I hadn't spoken to him in so long. After speaking to him, I just felt completely drained and I from that moment, I'm like, I can't keep this person in my life at all. He'd reached out again, he wanted to catch up again, and I just never responded. I hope that he's happy. I just hope that he's happy and that he he's true to himself. I don't
know where he is on his journey. I don't know where he is in regards to being true to his sexuality. I don't know where he is in his journey right now, But I just hope that he's happy. When I moved back to where I grew up, everything just changed. I ended up losing thirty three kilos. I was back to feeling good about myself. I felt stronger. Where I moved to, there was just like like it backs onto, like a reserve,
and it was just all like the nature. And I'd just sit out there with my copper cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and I just listened to the birds and I just be like, look at where I am, you know, like it was just such an amazing part of my healing journey. It was just part of it. And then I just I ended up scoring an amazing job, and everything in my life just started just started falling into place. And then I met my current partner now when he's just everything and more. He shows up for
me every single day. He's absolutely amazing, and I feel stronger for everything that I've been through. I do not regret a single thing because it makes me who I am today. I'm stronger for it. I feel like I had to start from the ground up. I walked into that relationship feeling confident. I got beaten down to the ground.
Every part of me was just destroyed and I had to rebuild myself from the ground up, And even though it was really hard and painful and horrendous, Like, I don't regret a single moment because who I am today is so much stronger, and like I have boundaries now, I am aware, I am confident in who I am. I don't put up with that stuff anymore. I don't anything I am, and since then my life has improved so much. You know, I only bring in all these beautiful people into my life now. I don't have time
for those energy vampires. I don't have time for anyone who is negative or brings me down. I am strong in who I am, and I wouldn't be if it wasn't for all those times I learned what I need, what I need for me, not just out of a relationship, but who I am. I think I didn't even know who I was properly before all of that. Building yourself from the ground up really teaches you a lot about yourself. And I'm proud of who I am, and I'm proud of how far I've come, and I'm happy. I'm happy
now and I don't regret anything. The truth is that there is that light at the end of the time, and it really does come. And I just think that you just need to keep going because time doesn't stop for anyone. Life doesn't stop, It never stops. It just keeps going, and everything always balances out. And no matter how hard things feel and how hard things are, life really does improve. It really does.
Everyone has an ex is a Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mum and mea network. It's written and narrated by me Georgia Love and produced by Linda Scott. If you like We've Heard, support the podcast by hitting subscribe,
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