Laying your cards on the table.......

That's what my friend said I should do and I just can't stop thinking about it, I've only really opened up and laid my cards on the table to one person, one of the two 'big ones' and I can't see that I'll ever do it again after that experience.

I remember being at Becky Falls in Devon, it was a lovely dry Autumn day and we were away for a week, he was taking photos at the other side of the bridge, we walked towards each other and at that moment I knew it was love, I even opened my mouth to say it but the words stuck in my throat, maybe my mouth knew that if they came out on my disappointment would follow?

The next time was when were were going through a bad patch sometime later, we'd already been together a couple of years by this point and still no 'I love you' on either side, in the middle of an argument I asked him if he had ever loved me and he told me he didn't know if he was capable of live but I was as near as he'd come, is that enough?

The truth is no, those words ate at me for years and they still do to this day, close wasn't enough, I knew in my heart he didn't love me, I never felt loved, how did I waste so much of my life on him? I very stupidly loved him and my heart didn't want to let that go.

The third time was one Christmas, I wrote it in his card, it was reciprocated with a thank you for the card, they are the only times in my life I have laid my cards on the table and said I love you and meant it, am I keen to let someone make me feel like that again? No, I can't say I am.

Eventually after nearly 5 years I asked him to leave, I was getting to the point of wanting to settle down and I knew that with him I had no chance of that, it happened on a Monday evening when I got home from work, we talked the next day and said we'd have a couple of weeks break instead to see if we could work things out, I didn't contact him the whole time to see if we could clear our heads apart, we were due to meet on the Tuesday.

The whole time he was gone I missed him like crazy but I carried on, went to work and hardly a soul knew (incase we got back together) on the Friday before we were due to meet I text to say I'd missed him and that I hoped we could work things out.

I had an HTC diamond phone in those days and anyone that had one knows that they had a home key that if you had a message it used to light up a ring around the home key, my phone used to sit next to my laptop at work.

At 10 on Monday morning the day before we were due to meet the phone lit up, he'd have had no doubt of where I would be, I the office, an hour and a half away from home.

I opened the message to see a message saying that he'd missed me too but that we weren't going to work out long term, if he was ready to settle down it would be with me, I took myself into the toilet to try to compose myself, by the time I'd been gone about half hour someone came to look for me, I was a teary, broken mess and had to walk out in front of my staff like that and drive home in that state, my boss wasn't even going to let me drive but after feeding me tea and sympathy they let me go home.

He came to pick up his things the next day and I sobbed like a baby, I was totally broken, blacking out through stress and so helpless that I had to go and stay with my mum 40 miles away, if you knew the relationship my mum and I have you'd know that meant I was bad! I lost  two and a half stone in those first two weeks.

We were still Facebook friends and I tried to be dignified, until I found out he was seeing someone and she'd been to his family for dinner, two weeks after we split up, I felt totally betrayed by them all, his friend had also been seeing her previously and dumped her because he said she was mental.

On a Friday morning two weeks after that Monday I got the message I flipped, I told him that he was an emotional bully and that just because it didn't leave bruises he was no better than a wife beater, emotional scars run very deep. I also posted a status on Facebook saying 'I wonder if his best mate had finished pulling his trousers up before you stuck yours in' but it wasn't long before I'd deleted everyone we had in common.

The man that couldn't commit was married within the year, I saw the wedding photos and for all the times he called me fat I'm positively a supermodel in comparison!

I don't think I can lay my cards on the table, I still have the scars from the last time.