With My Secret Valentine Behind My Boyfriend’s Back

Some years ago I was in a relationship with a guy who I didn’t realise at the time took total control over me. He could also be quite an aggressive person, especially when he didn’t get his own way.

His only way of controlling me and ensuring that I didn’t leave him was to make me feel unwanted by anyone else. I wasn’t a very confident person at that time and it was easy for him to make me believe that nobody else wanted to be with me.

I was totally under his control and he liked it that way, his little slave to do with as he pleased.

At that time I was also without a job, so there were no outside forces encouraging me to look outside my own personal prison. He became my world and I believed that he loved me deeply and likewise that I loved him.

Funny how circumstances can bring about a new way of thinking and life changing decisions…

Day in and day out I lived the life of Miss recluse. Until out of the blue I decided to further my education and use my time out of work to better myself. I attended an open evening at a local college and found the ideal course for me.

When the term came around I enrolled and started the three days a week course. It was like a new lease of life, new surroundings, new friends and best of all a feeling of self worth. I had broken out of the mould and decided to bring about my own change.

Weeks passed and I was really enjoying the course. But something else happened too…

…I met someone else.

I felt guilty at first for letting feelings develop for this other guy. After all I was supposed to be in a relationship with the man I loved, probably the man I would marry. But I knew there was something better out there. Someone better out there, who would love me and care for me and not try to suppress and stifle the very life within me. That’s not love and as the day’s passed and I spent more time with the guy between classes, I began to see the light.

Those three days in his presence were no longer enough, I wanted to be with him every waking hour. He made me feel invigorated and alive, a person with thoughts, feeling and emotions. When I wasn’t at college I would think of him constantly.

There were no kisses or intimate moments between us. We just enjoyed talking and being together. I gave him my number to call me and that was the start of the clandestine meetings. Although feeling guilty for seeing this other guy behind my boyfriends back at the same time I began to believe that he deserved this after the way he had treated me.

A few weeks in to my new found relationship came Valentines Day. I met up with my new found friend and he gave me a music CD I mentioned that I wanted to buy. It bowled me over that he had remembered me mentioning it to him during conversation, I certainly wasn’t hinting that he should buy it for me.

This also presented a problem for me. Where was I going to say I acquired this gift, after all we were short of money with me not working. I told him that my friend had loaned it to me and he seemed to believe me.

As the days passed I found coping with my duplicity hard to handle and decided to come clean. It was a difficult decision to make, I had no idea if I was jumping from fat to fryer. I wondered if it was better the devil you know for a moment and then decided it was time for me to move on and find the happiness I had been looking for.

I very bravely told my boyfriend about my new friend. He exploded just as I though he would and I left for my own safety to go and live with my parents once more.

It was the wisest thing I ever did…it was the start of my beginnings with Alex.