u/Left_Phase3166

I was with my ex for 5 years, and I’m struggling to process how much of the last 4 months was built on infidelity, lies, and manipulation.

The short version is this: she broke up with me on November 16 in a 40-second phone call, gave me vague reasons like religion, marriage, kids, timing, family pressure, and needing to “be sure,” then 3 days later started seeing another guy. What followed was 4 months of cheating while she kept me emotionally attached and kept pretending there was still a real chance for us.

I did not know about him at first. I was devastated after the breakup and still fought for us. I flew to Vancouver days later because I couldn’t accept that a 5-year relationship had ended like that. She told me she wanted to try. She told me she was coming back. She told me she loved me. So I believed her. Meanwhile, she had already started seeing him behind my back.

For the next 4 months, she kept me in this horrible limbo where she would say she was confused, that she loved me, that she missed me, that she wanted to try, that she might move back to Toronto, that she would do anything for us, and that she wanted to give us a real chance.

At the same time, she was sleeping with him.

Then I eventually found explicit messages between them. Months’ worth. Frequent, intimate messages sent during the exact same period she was telling me she loved me and keeping me attached.

I didn’t learn about it because she finally came clean. I saw the sexting myself. I found the messages and they were explicit, frequent, and impossible to explain away. It wasn’t harmless texting, and it wasn’t some one-time slip. It was months of sexual, intimate messages with him during the same time she was still telling me she loved me, missed me, and wanted to work on us.

Reading that completely shattered me because it meant I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t overthinking, and I wasn’t misunderstanding anything I had been getting lied to while fighting for a relationship that she was already betraying behind my back.

The messages were not some one-time slip. This was a sustained hidden relationship while she kept me as emotional backup.

After I confronted her, she swung again and said she would cancel plans, move to Toronto, and give us everything. Then after speaking to her mom, she would flip cold again. According to her own words, her mom knew she was dealing with two guys at once and said things like “two guys are better than none,” and that moving to Toronto would mean she wouldn’t be able to meet other guys.

What really messed with my head was how much she minimized it whenever pieces started coming out. She would tell me things like:

• they weren’t really doing much,
• they didn’t make out,
• they slept on opposite ends of the bed,
• they used condoms,
• they split everything,
• it wasn’t emotional like that,
• it wasn’t what I thought,
• she was just confused,
• she was trying to avoid conflict,
• she didn’t know what she wanted.

But none of that changes the core truth: she kept choosing to see him while also keeping me emotionally involved.

She lied constantly. She told me she was alone when she wasn’t. She told me she was with friends on weekends when she was actually at his place. She disguised his location pings on her phone under her best friend Julie’s name. She lied to our couples therapist. She lied to her own therapist too, by her own admission.

And I kept flying to Vancouver, because every time I thought I had clarity, she would say something that pulled me back in. She would cry. She would soften. She would say she loved me. She would say she was coming back. She would say she wanted to try. She would say she would do anything.

One of the most insane moments was when, after talking to her mom one night, she texted me: “Babe I love you, I am coming home. Everything is okay. I will give it everything and I want to hug you.” Within 6 hours, by the next morning, she had changed again and said she had clarity and couldn’t do it.

I even got her to come to Toronto for a couples therapy session. She brought a letter. The whole time she was sitting there supposedly trying to work on our relationship, the other guy was still sharing his location with her on her phone, saved under her best friend’s name so I wouldn’t notice.

Then she went to Europe and framed it as needing space to find herself. Once she got there, she became even colder, removed her location, blocked me on Instagram, and eventually admitted she was still in contact with him.

Now she says we will never be together again and that cutting communication is the healthiest path.

What I can’t get over is not just the cheating itself. It’s the prolonged deception. It’s the trickle-truth. It’s the minimization. It’s being told “I love you” while she was sleeping with someone else. It’s being kept emotionally alive as the safe option while she explored another man.

That is the part that has wrecked my brain.

I’m in therapy now. I’m barely sleeping. I have anxiety attacks, intrusive flashbacks, and this constant feeling that I got psychologically dismantled over 4 months, not just cheated on once.

I know I should have walked away sooner. I know people on the outside will say it’s obvious. But when someone keeps crying in your arms, telling you they love you, swearing they want to try, and giving you just enough hope to stay, it destroys your sense of reality.

I don’t even know what I’m asking for by posting this. Maybe I just need to hear from people who understand what this kind of infidelity does to you, because it feels like I didn’t just lose a relationship. I got slowly broken down while still fighting for someone who was living a double life.

I don’t know if my ex is clinically a narcissist, and I’m not trying to armchair-diagnose her. But the way the last part of this relationship played out has left me feeling like I went through something that looks and feels a lot like narcissistic abuse: gaslighting, double realities, intermittent reinforcement, false hope, reality distortion, and being emotionally dismantled while still loving the person doing it.

We were together for 5 years. The relationship had real history, real intimacy, and real future talk. That’s part of why this has been so hard to process. This wasn’t some casual situationship where someone ghosted me. This was someone I loved deeply, someone who called me her best friend, soulmate, person, and at times made me believe we were building a life together. Then everything started splitting into two realities.

On one side, she was telling me she loved me, missed me, wanted to try, wanted to come back, wanted to move to Toronto, wanted to make it work, and would do anything for us. She would cry, soften, pull me close, talk about our history, and speak to me in a way that made me believe the connection between us was still alive and real. On the other side, she was cheating, hiding another man, lying constantly, rewriting events, minimizing what she was doing, and keeping me in a permanent state of confusion.

She broke up with me on November 16 in a 40-second phone call and gave me vague, shifting reasons: religion, kids, marriage, timing, family pressure, needing to be sure, saying she would always look over her shoulder if she didn’t do this. None of it made sense as a stable explanation because her words and behavior kept changing depending on the day, the mood, or who she had spoken to. After that, instead of ending it cleanly, she kept me emotionally attached while starting something with another guy. Three days after that breakup call, she started seeing him.

But she did not tell me that.

Instead, she kept me in a cycle that I now realize was destroying my ability to trust my own reality. She would tell me she loved me. She would tell me she missed me. She would tell me she wanted to try. She would tell me she was confused. She would tell me she was coming back. She would tell me she would do anything. And every time I started to detach, she would give me just enough softness, hope, guilt, or emotion to pull me back in.

That cycle is what broke me. It was not just the cheating. It was the push-pull. The hot-cold. The “I love you” followed by distance. The crying followed by lies. The promises followed by reversals. The way I was never allowed to stand on solid ground long enough to make a clean decision for myself because she kept changing the emotional temperature.

She also constantly minimized and reframed what she was doing.

When pieces of the truth started surfacing, she would say things like they weren’t really doing much, they didn’t make out, they slept on opposite ends of the bed, they used condoms, they split everything, it wasn’t emotional like that, it wasn’t what I thought, she was just confused, she was trying to avoid conflict, and she didn’t know what she wanted.

That kind of minimization messed with my head badly because it made me feel like I was constantly being invited to doubt the seriousness of what was actually happening.

She lied in small ways and big ways. She said she was alone when she wasn’t. She said she was with friends when she was actually with him. She disguised his location on her phone under her best friend Julie’s name. She lied to our couples therapist. She lied to her own therapist too, by her own admission.

And through all of it, I kept trying to respond to the version of her that seemed hurt, conflicted, loving, and reachable.

That is what I think people outside of this dynamic don’t always understand. It wasn’t that I was too stupid to see what was happening. It was that every time reality became clear enough for me to leave, she would say or do something that reopened the bond. She knew how to reach my heart because she had lived there for 5 years.

The most damaging part may have been the way she made me feel responsible for understanding her while she gave herself permission to keep destroying my sense of stability. Everything became about her confusion, her pressure, her family, her fear, her need for space, her need to find herself, her inability to know what she wanted. Meanwhile, I was the one absorbing the chaos, the lies, the waiting, and the emotional whiplash.

Even when I found the explicit messages and sexting myself, she still did not just tell the truth cleanly. I had to drag reality into the light. And even after that, there were more reversals. More tears. More declarations that she would cancel plans, move back, and give us everything. Then one conversation with her mom later and she would flip again.

At one point she texted me at night saying, “Babe I love you, I am coming home. Everything is okay. I will give it everything and I want to hug you.” Within 6 hours, she had changed again and said she had clarity and couldn’t do it.

That kind of thing does something terrible to your nervous system. You stop trusting the good moments because you know they might disappear overnight. You stop trusting the bad moments because you know they might suddenly become soft again. You start living in reaction mode, constantly scanning for the next shift.

I even got her to come to Toronto for couples therapy. She brought a letter. The entire time she was sitting there supposedly trying to work on our relationship, the other guy was still sharing his location with her on her phone under another name.

Later she framed going to Europe as needing space to find herself away from me and away from her mom. Even then, the same dynamic kept happening: closeness, then coldness; reassurance, then withdrawal; connection, then distance. She removed her location, blocked me on Instagram, and eventually admitted she was still in contact with him.

By the end, I did not feel like a partner. I felt like a supply source she returned to whenever she needed comfort, history, safety, forgiveness, or relief from guilt while still keeping another life going elsewhere.

That is the piece I cannot shake.

Not just that she cheated. Not just that she lied. But that she kept me emotionally alive inside the relationship while she slowly hollowed me out.

I’m in therapy now. I have anxiety attacks, intrusive flashbacks, dissociation, sleep issues, and this constant feeling that my brain is still trying to reconcile two different versions of the same person: the woman who held me and cried and called me her person, and the woman who could lie to me, use me for emotional stability, and keep betraying me while watching me fight for us.

I still struggle with whether this was narcissistic abuse or just extreme avoidance, selfishness, shame, family pressure, and weak character. Maybe it was some combination. But whatever label fits best, the impact has been the same: I feel like my reality was repeatedly bent until I stopped knowing what was true unless I had proof in front of me.

That is what I’m trying to recover from. Not just heartbreak. Not just infidelity. The destruction of trust in my own perception.

I was with my ex for 5 years, and I’m struggling to process how much of the last 4 months was built on infidelity, lies, and manipulation.

The short version is this: she broke up with me on November 16 in a 40-second phone call, gave me vague reasons like religion, marriage, kids, timing, family pressure, and needing to “be sure,” then 3 days later started seeing another guy. What followed was 4 months of cheating while she kept me emotionally attached and kept pretending there was still a real chance for us.

I did not know about him at first. I was devastated after the breakup and still fought for us. I flew to Vancouver days later because I couldn’t accept that a 5-year relationship had ended like that. She told me she wanted to try. She told me she was coming back. She told me she loved me. So I believed her.

Meanwhile, she had already started seeing him.

For the next 4 months, she kept me in this horrible limbo where she would say she was confused, that she loved me, that she missed me, that she wanted to try, that she might move back to Toronto, that she would do anything for us, and that she wanted to give us a real chance.

At the same time, she was sleeping with him.

What really messed with my head was how much she minimized it whenever pieces started coming out. She would tell me things like:

• they weren’t really doing much,
• they didn’t make out,
• they slept on opposite ends of the bed,
• they used condoms,
• they split everything,
• it wasn’t emotional like that,
• it wasn’t what I thought,
• she was just confused,
• she was trying to avoid conflict,
• she didn’t know what she wanted.

But none of that changes the core truth: she kept choosing to see him while also keeping me emotionally involved.

She lied constantly. She told me she was alone when she wasn’t. She told me she was with friends on weekends when she was actually at his place. She disguised his location pings on her phone under her best friend Julie’s name. She lied to our couples therapist. She lied to her own therapist too, by her own admission.

And I kept flying to Vancouver, because every time I thought I had clarity, she would say something that pulled me back in. She would cry. She would soften. She would say she loved me. She would say she was coming back. She would say she wanted to try. She would say she would do anything.

Then I eventually found explicit messages between them. Months’ worth. Frequent, intimate messages sent during the exact same period she was telling me she loved me and keeping me attached.

I didn’t learn about it because she finally came clean. I saw the sexting myself. I found the messages and they were explicit, frequent, and impossible to explain away. It wasn’t harmless texting, and it wasn’t some one-time slip. It was months of sexual, intimate messages with him during the same time she was still telling me she loved me, missed me, and wanted to work on us.

Reading that completely shattered me because it meant I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t overthinking, and I wasn’t misunderstanding anything. I had been getting lied to while fighting for a relationship that she was already betraying behind my back.

The messages were not some one-time slip. This was a sustained hidden relationship while she kept me as emotional backup.

After I confronted her, she swung again and said she would cancel plans, move to Toronto, and give us everything. Then after speaking to her mom, she would flip cold again. According to her own words, her mom knew she was dealing with two guys at once and said things like “two guys are better than none,” and that moving to Toronto would mean she wouldn’t be able to meet other guys.

One of the most insane moments was when, after talking to her mom one night, she texted me: “Babe I love you, I am coming home. Everything is okay. I will give it everything and I want to hug you.” Within 6 hours, by the next morning, she had changed again and said she had clarity and couldn’t do it.

I even got her to come to Toronto for a couples therapy session. She brought a letter. The whole time she was sitting there supposedly trying to work on our relationship, the other guy was still sharing his location with her on her phone, saved under her best friend’s name so I wouldn’t notice.

Then she went to Europe and framed it as needing space to find herself. Once she got there, she became even colder, removed her location, blocked me on Instagram, and eventually admitted she was still in contact with him.

Now she says we will never be together again and that cutting communication is the healthiest path.

What I can’t get over is not just the cheating itself. It’s the prolonged deception. It’s the trickle-truth. It’s the minimization. It’s being told “I love you” while she was sleeping with someone else. It’s being kept emotionally alive as the safe option while she explored another man.

That is the part that has wrecked my brain.

I’m in therapy now. I’m barely sleeping. I have anxiety attacks, intrusive flashbacks, and this constant feeling that I got psychologically dismantled over 4 months, not just cheated on once.

I know I should have walked away sooner. I know people on the outside will say it’s obvious. But when someone keeps crying in your arms, telling you they love you, swearing they want to try, and giving you just enough hope to stay, it destroys your sense of reality.

I don’t even know what I’m asking for by posting this. Maybe I just need to hear from people who understand what this kind of infidelity does to you, because it feels like I didn’t just lose a relationship I got slowly broken down while still fighting for someone who was living a double life.

I don’t really know how to tell this story in a way that makes sense because even now it still feels unreal to me.

I was with my ex for 5 years, and I loved her with everything I had. By the beginning of 2025, I genuinely thought we were building a future.

I helped her move back from Chicago at the end of 2024. In January, I took her to Vegas, in April, we went to Japan for 3 weeks and I planned the entire trip myself while she had finals so it would be easy for her. In July, we went to Coldplay and it was one of the happiest memories of our relationship. We were also having real conversations about marriage, religion, kids, and the future. At one point I even went to look at rings because her best friend was ring shopping and she kept bringing it up.

Then May came and everything in her life got more intense.

She started full-time at Wealthsimple, was doing a full Waterloo/Laurier course load, and on top of that was also doing a research role related to AI in finance. She was pushing herself insanely hard, working 9–10 hour days because she wanted to outwork everyone and get promoted within her first year. She had this drive to make it big and always seemed haunted by the feeling that if she didn’t end up in the U.S., in some elite path, in some Ivy League-type success story, then she had somehow failed.

I could see her burning out in real time. She was losing her spark. By June, she would work all day, go for a walk, and then spend every free second on her laptop again. I kept telling her to slow down. I kept telling her there would be no work left if there was no her left. She wouldn’t stop.

At the same time, her family pressure was always there in the background and honestly probably shaped more of this than I understood at the time.

She’s Christian and I’m Muslim, and her mom had always been against me from the start. Her mom had a huge influence over her. From what she told me, her mom had said unbelievably cruel things to her growing up, including that having her was one of her biggest regrets because of what she had to sacrifice in her own career. Her mom’s comments about her body also contributed to her eating issues. Even while we were dating, when she’d go back to Calgary, her mom would knowingly arrange situations with colleagues’ sons or bring her around men in a way that felt like low-key setup attempts.

In June, her mom told her, “You can find love again, but you only marry once.” At the time, when my ex told me about it, it was almost like she knew it was ridiculous too. I had no idea that sentence was going to come back later and become one of the lines that would haunt me.

She also went to China with her mom for almost 3 weeks to visit her grandparents. When she came back, she told me they had basically made her their sole legacy, that they saw her as their only hope, had willed everything to her, and expected huge things from her. They were openly disappointed she hadn’t gotten into an Ivy League school. Despite all of this, I still believed we were okay.

We were still doing normal couple things. Before my parents came to visit at the end of July, she helped me clean my house, buy new utensils, and get things ready. She was helpful, involved, and present. I told her around then that because things were getting more serious, I would try to talk to my mom about her and us, even though I knew it would be difficult because of the religion issue.

My own life had stress too. I was working full-time in Canada on a PGWP, and based on how the Canadian Experience Class draws were going, I was scared I wasn’t going to get PR in time. My permit was expiring March 9, 2026. My company was trying internally to see if they could sponsor me, but I didn’t have answers. At one point she started saying she could marry me so I could stay, but I told her very clearly that I wouldn’t marry her just for immigration. I loved her and wanted that step to mean something real.

In August, my family was visiting, but I still kept making time for her. We went to The Weeknd concert together. I went to see her on a weekday and stayed the night in Waterloo even while juggling family visiting me. Near the end of August, I drove to her, helped pack all her things, moved them into storage, drove her around, then drove her to the airport as she went to Vancouver and then to China. She kept telling me she would come back. She kept making it sound temporary.

After China, she stayed in Vancouver with her mom, and I know now that something was changing in her, but at the time I didn’t know that. On the surface, we were still talking normally. She told me she would come back on October 8 to be with me and go to her convocation.

When she came back in October, I could immediately feel how burnt out and low she was. So I planned a cottage trip with friends that weekend to get her away and help her disconnect. I kept telling her not to bring her work laptop. She brought it anyway.

At the cottage, everyone could tell she was burnt out. Then when we were alone, she told me she didn’t want to be with me because she felt like she wasn’t the person she was supposed to be and that I made her too comfortable. I remember trying to explain that I hadn’t made her complacent, that if anything I had supported her and helped her become stronger in so many ways. I still didn’t leave.

Then on October 19, 5 days before her next convocation and my Peru trip, after that dinner, she looked at me and repeated her mom’s line almost word for word: “You can find love again, but you only marry once.” She tried to break up with me.

I was shocked and furious. I told her her mom had gotten into her head. I asked her to leave. She booked a hotel, started packing, and I started giving her her stuff back. Then as she was about to walk out, I went to her, hugged her, and told her I wouldn’t give up on us that easily. She broke down crying in my arms and promised me we would work through it and figure it out together. And then, unbelievably, an hour later we still went to that dinner. That is the kind of emotional whiplash this became.

A few days later, we went to her convocation. I met her mom for the first time. A few days before that, she had told me she was going to stay at my place while I was in Peru and that when I came back, we’d be together. Then right before that convocation I found out her mom had booked a return flight for her back to Vancouver.

On the day of convocation, after lunch with her mom, she sat in the car near where her mom was and went on about how toxic her mom was, how much her mom got on her nerves, how much she hated being around her, and how much she would miss me. We kissed goodbye. I loaded her things into her mom’s trunk. Then I drove back to Toronto, rushed to pack, and went to the airport for Peru.

She kept telling me she was sad, missed me, wanted to disappear and not come out until summer. She also told me she’d had a huge fight with her mom about us and that her parents had said if she married me, they would cut her out of the will because it would be disrespecting them.

I kept telling her we’d talk when I got back, that nothing had changed, that we just needed to be together and figure it out.

Then I came back from Peru, found out my company wouldn’t sponsor me after all, and right after that got so sick I was basically bedridden for 5 days.

While I was sick, she called me and said she wanted to marry me but didn’t know why she couldn’t do it. I told her it was the timing and circumstances and that we couldn’t make such a huge decision in the middle of total chaos. Then she told me she’d come to Toronto on November 18 and that we’d be together. I believed her.

Then on November 16, after not hearing from her all day, she called me late at night sobbing and ended our 5-year relationship in around 40 seconds.

The reasons were vague and shifting. Religion. Marriage. Kids. Timing. Family pressure. Not being sure. Needing to do it “to be sure.” Saying she’d always look over her shoulder if she didn’t. Saying we had “only” known each other for 5 years and maybe that wasn’t enough. Saying I deserved someone who loved me and would give me kids. None of it made sense in the context of how she had been talking to me right before that.

I completely broke.

And still, on November 22, I flew to Vancouver because I couldn’t accept that it ended like that. I needed to see her. I needed to understand. I needed to fight for us. I literally went there knowing only her street address and sat outside her house for 7 hours waiting to see her. She told me she wanted to try. She told me she was coming back. I flew home holding onto that.

Three days later, on November 25, she started seeing another guy.

I did not know that at the time.

For the next 4 months, I got dragged through what I can only describe as psychological torture. She kept me emotionally attached while building something else behind my back. She told me she loved me. She told me she missed me. She told me she was confused. She told me she needed time. She told me she wanted to try. She told me she was working on herself. She told me she might move back to Toronto. She told me she would do anything. She told me she would give us a chance.

Meanwhile, she was sleeping with him.

She lied constantly. She would tell me she was alone, but she wasn’t. She would tell me she was with friends on weekends, but she was actually at his place. She disguised his location on her phone under her best friend Julie’s name. She lied to our couples therapist. She lied to her own therapist by her own admission.

And I kept flying out to Vancouver.

That is the part that is hardest for me to even say out loud, because it makes me feel pathetic, but it’s the truth. I kept flying there because every time I thought I had clarity, she would say something else that pulled me back in. She would say she loved me. She would say she wanted to try. She would say she was coming back. She would say she would do anything. She would cry. She would soften. She would promise. And I wanted so badly for the girl I loved to still be in there somewhere that I kept going.

As those months went on, I thought things were getting better. Then I found explicit messages between her and the other guy. Months’ worth. Frequent. Intimate. The kind of things she had never even said to me in five years. Reading them destroyed something in me.

After I confronted her, she swung again. Suddenly she said she would cancel plans, move back to Toronto, and give this everything. I wanted to believe it. Part of me still did.

Then came the part that still makes me sick: according to her own words, her mom told her things like “two guys are better than none” and said that moving to Toronto would mean she wouldn’t be able to meet other guys.

At one point, after a long conversation with her mom, she texted me at night saying, “Babe I love you, I am coming home. Everything is okay. I will give it everything and I want to hug you.” Within 6 hours, by the next morning, she had flipped again and said she had clarity now and couldn’t do it. Six hours.

I still convinced her to come to Toronto one more time. We did a couples therapy session together. She brought a letter. The whole time she was sitting there supposedly trying to work on our relationship with me and a therapist, the other guy was still sharing his location with her on her phone, saved under bestfriend's name so I wouldn’t notice.

After that, it was the same cycle again and again. Pull away. Recommit. Pull away. Recommit.

Then she decided to go to Europe. She framed it as a trip to find herself, away from me and away from her mom, to become her own person. She told me in person it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see her.

Once she got to Europe, the back-and-forth got even worse. She would have anxious calls with me, then go cold. She removed her location. Blocked me on Instagram. Then later reactivated accounts and started posting from Barcelona. I noticed the other guy’s Instagram bio started matching her trip with location flags. When I asked her about it, she acted like she didn’t know what he was doing. Eventually I asked her directly if she was still in contact with him. She admitted she was.

More recently, she sent me what is basically the final message: that we will never be together again, that she is cutting communication, and that this is the healthiest path for both of us.

I’m in therapy now. Weekly. I’m barely sleeping. I get anxiety attacks, dissociation, intrusive flashbacks to the messages I saw, and moments where I feel like my body still hasn’t caught up to what happened. The worst part is not even just the cheating.

It’s that I loved her so completely, and for months she kept me emotionally alive inside the relationship while she was already half gone and then fully gone. She kept giving me just enough hope to stay, just enough softness to come back, just enough promises to make me believe I wasn’t crazy for holding on. And I did hold on.

I held on while she burned out. I held on while her family poisoned things. I held on while religion, marriage, kids, cities, ambition, immigration, fear, and her mother’s voice all got tangled together. I held on while she kept changing her story. I held on while she lied. I held on while she slept with someone else.

I know how this sounds. I know from the outside it probably looks obvious that I should have left earlier. Maybe I should have. But when you love someone for 5 years, when they are your best friend, when they keep crying in your arms and telling you they love you and want to try, it doesn’t feel obvious from the inside. It feels like if you just hold on one more time, maybe the person you know will come back. She didn’t.

And now she’s in Europe, still in contact with him, while I’m left here trying to understand how the person I loved most in the world could destroy me this slowly.

I don’t really know what I’m asking for by posting this. Maybe I just needed to write it all somewhere because carrying it alone is crushing me. I know people will say I’m better off. Maybe I am. But right now I don’t feel lucky. I feel broken. I feel humiliated. I feel like I lost my best friend and then got dragged behind the car while she figured out whether I still mattered.

That’s the truth