So this is why I needed a different approach.

The issue here is that I’ve only ever dated one person. Robbie. We kissed for the first time when we were fifteen, started to see each other seriously (in a groping and proper snogging kind of way) when we were sixteen, had sex at seventeen, shared a holiday at eighteen, and it all developed from there. Until he left the country at thirty to find himself, and never came back. Thirty, I ask you? Which bits haven’t you discovered by the time you’re thirty?

I’m not sure if he’s still looking, or if he just found out he was a different person than he expected. Or if he actually just found a totally different person who he decided he wanted to shack up with. The details aren’t clear.

But shortly before he left I think we both realised that this wasn’t ‘it’. And we still had time to say so and get out before it was too late. So he did. And I’m a bit cross I didn’t have the guts to do it first.

It took a while for us to admit it, because it’s hard and scary to take the leap of faith. But we’d grown up and grown apart – matured into two individuals with different expectations and desires. His evolving man-buns (cool), tantric sex in a tepee (from the photos I could see on his Facebook page after he’d set off on his travels, but OMG what if people were listening?), green tea (yuk) and mung beans (not tried them, not going to try them), and looking after the planet.

I’m all for looking after the planet but I want a house of my own (with proper walls and curtains) to have sex in, lots of coffee with the odd smoothie, and Deliveroo at my fingertips. Oh, and Netflix.

See? Totally incompatible. How did we never see that happening, and go our separate ways earlier?

Even though it was right that it was over, it was still sad. Like scooping out a section of my heart and watching it dissolve, leaving a small hollow that ached with nothingness. Like closing the door on a part of my growing up that I’d loved. The carefree, happy, hopeful anything-can-happen part.

I had lost a part of my naïve optimism. A part of my joy.

It had made me doubt that happy-ever-afters actually exist.

Up until now I’d ignored some of the shitty love experiences that my nearest and dearest had had to deal with; I had told myself that they were the exceptions and what I had – happiness – was totally possible if you went about it in the right way. I thought I was special, we were special. Admitting to myself that Robbie leaving was the right thing shot that theory totally in the foot.

There was a gaping hole in my soul (and the flat) after he reappeared briefly, all tanned, tousle-haired and sheepish, and packed the rest of his stuff into two very large rucksacks and a couple of bags for life.