I went to see the doctor and was told that my oestrogen levels were effectively at zero. She recommended that I start HRT — hormone replacement therapy. I was also diagnosed with an intimate medical condition which, although manageable, carried a small risk of developing into cancer. Ordinarily, this was the kind of frightening news I would have shared with Stephen. But he had just told me that he didn’t know whether he wanted a future with me anymore, and suddenly I didn’t feel safe enough to tell him. I was afraid it might give him another reason to reject me, or that he might think I was using the diagnosis to make him feel guilty or emotionally pressure him into staying. So I kept it to myself.
Stephen took me to see a flat he had his eye on.
The flat itself was in an awful state.
During a period when it had been unoccupied, there had been a major leak in the airing cupboard which had flooded the bathroom, kitchen and hallway. The floorboards were visibly rotten and water-damaged. The kitchen was filthy and dilapidated, with the sink hanging away from the wall. The windows were old, their wooden frames bare and rotting.
Of course, there was potential. But there was also an enormous amount of work.
I remember looking around and thinking that even if somebody worked on it every day, it could easily take a year to put right.
That, apparently, was exactly what Stephen wanted.
Where I saw rotten floorboards, damaged windows and months of work, he seemed to see possibility. I pointed out that the windows would probably need replacing too.
He wasn’t put off.
If anything, he became more excited.
And I began to understand that my opinion wasn’t really part of this decision anyway.
This was Stephen’s life now. Stephen’s flat. Stephen’s project. Stephen’s choice.
He bought it.
Then he asked whether he could continue living with me while he renovated it.
Even then, he left the door to us slightly open. He said that if he eventually decided we should stay together, perhaps we could live in the flat ourselves. Or he could rent it out. Or sell it for more money.
Somehow, even while creating a life that could exist entirely without me, he was still allowing me to imagine that I might have a place somewhere inside it.
And I clung to that possibility.
I told him he could stay with me for as long as he needed.
I even offered to take him to IKEA for some inspiration. He had never been to one of their stores before, and I thought seeing all the different room displays might give him ideas for what he could eventually do with the flat.
On the outside, I was still helping.
Inside, I was sad.
I went to work every day and tried to do my best. In many ways, work became the one reliably good thing in my life. I was grateful to have somewhere to go each morning, somewhere that required my attention and gave my days some structure.
Coming home was harder.
I was coming home every evening to the man I loved while knowing that he was excitedly planning a future which, in many respects, no longer included me.
Yet our old life hadn’t quite stopped either.
His youngest son still stayed with us on his usual weekends. I still took him to tennis.
I was still performing the ordinary routines of our family life while Stephen was telling me he didn’t know whether he wanted a future with me.
Then Stephen said he wanted to go to Scotland for a few days. He wanted to visit his friend and have some time away to think.
Before he left, we made our trip to IKEA.
I had warned him beforehand that the final battle of the season on my game app started at three o’clock. It was the culmination of an eight-week season and our alliances would all be going to war. If we weren’t home by then, I told him, I would need to find somewhere quiet in IKEA for a while so I could take part.
He was fine with that.
We actually had a really enjoyable time.
We wandered through all the room displays together, looking at kitchens, bedrooms and living spaces. Stephen became inspired by what he could potentially do with the flat.
Job done.
But we stayed longer than I had expected, so eventually I suggested we get something to eat and I could dip into my game while we were there.
We sat at a table just outside the store and I started playing.
Stephen kept trying to talk to me.
I was losing concentration.
And I snapped at him.
Perhaps almost five years of trying to be patient, forgiving and understanding, only to find myself sitting opposite a man who now wasn’t sure whether he wanted me at all, had finally begun to erode some of that patience.
Whatever the reason, I was short with him.
Stephen was clearly offended.
He immediately got up from the table, walked over to a woman who was smoking nearby and asked her for a cigarette.
Something about it infuriated me.
One small rupture between us and, within moments, there was Stephen talking to another woman with a cigarette in his hand.
I lost my momentum with the game. Then I lost interest altogether. I was annoyed.
We drove home, but whatever lightness there had been between us earlier had disappeared.
The atmosphere in the car wasn’t good.
When we got home, I was upset.
And that was when Stephen’s explanation for what was happening between us began to change.
Now he told me it was because I had taken my new job without properly considering his opinion or making it a joint decision.
It was because I hadn’t listened to his concerns about the menopause, yet now I was prepared to go to the doctor.
It was how we visited the frontier cabin and I had broken my promise to sort my life out.
It was how I continued to play my game, even though he had expressed disapproval and concern it was affecting our relationship.
It was because he had been trying to hold our relationship together for a very long time and I had taken that effort for granted. I hadn’t recognised what he had been doing to try to save us.
These were different explanations from the ones I had been trying to understand before.
I shut down.
I went upstairs, got onto the bed and curled myself into the foetal position.
Stephen followed me and continued talking about these new grievances.
I couldn’t take any more.
I was already anxious about him leaving for Scotland the following day. Our relationship was in some strange limbo where we were neither properly together nor properly apart, and I had no idea what he might do while he was away.
I felt as though I couldn’t breathe.
So I got up, left the house and climbed into my car.
I drove around for a while before eventually pulling over and searching for local hotels on my phone.
I found one, booked a room and disappeared there for the night.
Stephen wanted to know where I was. Was I okay? Was I safe?
I told him I was staying in a hotel.
At least this way I wouldn’t have to watch him leave for Scotland in the morning.
I actually had a week off work. I think originally we had intended to take a holiday together, back before Stephen had turned my life upside down.
Now my week looked very different.
I was taking my car for its annual service the following morning. I had a dentist appointment later in the week.
And otherwise, I had no idea what to do with myself.
At the hotel, I played my game because it filled the hours and gave my mind somewhere else to go.
Eventually, I told some of the alliance leaders what had happened between Stephen and me.
I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to.
I was desperately lonely in my despair.
One of the leaders told me he was going to remove Stephen from the alliance.
I hadn’t asked him to do that.
But I didn’t try very hard to stop him either.
By then, everything felt as though it was over anyway.
Stephen didn’t make it to Scotland.
Thunderstorms had disrupted the trains, so instead he made an impromptu detour to Manchester. He still wanted to use the time away and have some space to himself.
We didn’t talk much at first while he was there. His phone wasn’t always connected, and there were stretches when I didn’t hear from him.
He was due home on the Friday, and I decided I didn’t want to be there when he returned.
I booked myself a weekend at a health retreat.
I thought I could rest, recuperate and perhaps find enough quiet to work out what I wanted to do next.
On one of his final days away, Stephen and I had a proper conversation.
He told me about some of the places he had visited and mentioned that he had met up with B, the woman he introduced me to at the programme he had attended in London.
I was curious about how that had come about.
Stephen explained that he knew she lived in Manchester, so he had contacted her on the off-chance that she might be free to meet him for a coffee.
He told me she was the only person he knew in Manchester.
During that conversation, I also discovered that he wasn’t actually coming home on Friday.
He was coming home on Thursday.
The day before I left for my retreat.
I was disappointed.
I had arranged the retreat partly so I wouldn’t have to see him, and now we would have an entire evening together first.
When Stephen returned, there was an understandable frostiness between us. The last time we had been in the same room, I had been so overwhelmed that I had escaped through the front door and spent the night in a hotel.
But eventually we sat down and talked.
And Stephen told me a story.
He said that one evening in Manchester he had decided to take off the ring I had given him.
He wanted to go out and pretend he was single.
Just for an evening.
He wanted to see how it felt.
He told me he had gone to a pub and ended up talking to a woman. At some point, she apparently asked whether he wanted to move on somewhere else with her.
Stephen said no.
He told me that when the opportunity actually presented itself, it had felt wrong.
And just like that, hope returned.
Because I didn’t hear the story as Stephen taking off his ring and experimenting with being single.
I heard the ending.
When he had been given the opportunity to behave as though I no longer mattered, he had thought of us.
He had chosen not to go.
In that moment, he made me feel that perhaps I still mattered to him. That somewhere inside all his uncertainty, he had carried me with him.
I felt protected.
I felt honoured.
And, perhaps most importantly, I felt hope.
I think we shared the bed that night.
The following day, I went to my dentist appointment.
Then I packed my things and left for the retreat.
Reflection
Looking back, I was beginning to live in two realities at once. Stephen was buying a flat for a life that might not include me, while I was helping him imagine what that flat could become. I had received frightening medical news that I would once have shared with him immediately, yet I no longer felt secure enough to tell him. That contrast says something about how profoundly our relationship had changed. Outwardly I was still his partner. Internally, I was beginning to understand that I no longer knew whether I had the safety or status of one.
The uncertainty also made me extraordinarily sensitive to every indication of whether I still mattered. I listened to Stephen’s explanations for why we had reached this point and found myself confronted with an accumulating list of things I had apparently done wrong: the job, the menopause, the cabin, the game. Some of them were real disagreements we had experienced, but I hadn’t understood them as evidence that our relationship was in danger. Suddenly I was being asked to reinterpret parts of our recent history through an entirely different lens, at precisely the moment when I was least emotionally equipped to do it.
By the time I left the house and booked the hotel, I wasn’t trying to punish Stephen or make a dramatic statement. I simply couldn’t tolerate any more uncertainty in that moment. I needed somewhere I could close a door and not have to watch him leave, explain myself or absorb another conversation about what had gone wrong between us. The game became useful for much the same reason. It occupied my mind when being alone with my own thoughts felt unbearable, and the people inside it became an unexpected source of company when I felt desperately lonely in my real life.
Then Stephen returned from Manchester and told me about taking off his ring. There were many ways I could have interpreted that story, but I seized upon the one part that offered reassurance. He had tried pretending to be single, been presented with an opportunity and chosen not to take it. After weeks of hearing that he didn’t know whether he wanted me, that small act of restraint felt enormous. I didn’t hear evidence of how far he had already stepped outside our relationship. I heard evidence that some invisible boundary around us still existed.
That was the power of the position I had found myself in. Stephen no longer needed to choose a future with me for me to feel hopeful; he only needed to do something that suggested he hadn’t completely chosen a future without me. The standard had shifted almost without me noticing. I had once needed commitment, honesty and a shared direction. Now, in the absence of certainty, simply discovering that I still mattered could feel enough to keep me holding on.
